Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (29 page)

‘I don’t envy you that lot, my lord,’ said Clayton. ‘May I ask one very silly question from a country policeman in Kent not used to the ways of the big cities?’

‘Please do,’ said Powerscourt.

‘It’s this, my lord,’ said Inspector Clayton earnestly. ‘We’re always reading how unstable these Russian places are. Only last month, I read in the paper the other
day, there were hundreds of Russians killed by their own soldiers and that in the centre of St Petersburg itself. Mightn’t Mr Martin just have met a load of ruffians who robbed him and killed
him because he was a foreigner?’

‘Nothing is impossible, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, reluctant to say he thought they were playing for higher stakes than robbery and casual killing.

‘Anyway, my lord, that’s as may be. Now it’s my turn.’ Clayton looked down briefly at the papers on the little side table beside him, as if he had written out what he was
going to say. ‘Mrs Martin died from a fall from the tower of this house into the moat below. She hit her head on the stone wall of the footbridge on the way. That, according to the doctors,
was probably what killed her. As far as we know, on the day of her death Mrs Letitia Martin was alone in this house. There is a housekeeper cum cook, married to a butler cum handyman cum coachman,
who live in one of the little cottages opposite the tower you’ll probably have seen on your way in, my lord. Kennedy, they’re called. Their daughter in Tonbridge has just given birth to
their first grandchild so Mrs Martin gave permission for them to go and spend two days and nights with the new arrival. We can find no record of anybody else coming to visit her. Constable
Watchett, who is an expert woodsman, is checking through all the surrounding area to see if he can find any traces of any intruder. So far, not a thing.’

Inspector Clayton paused for a moment. ‘We know,’ he went on, ‘that she was in the habit of reading, or writing letters or working on the household accounts in the next library
bay to this one, the one with the rope across it, my lord. We can have a look in there in a moment. We know from the doctors that she probably died somewhere between three and six in the afternoon.
We have no idea if she went up to the tower on her own, or if some unknown visitor came with her. The unfortunate thing is that Mr and Mrs Kennedy went away on the Tuesday. Poor Mrs Martin died on
the same day. The Kennedys did not come back until early evening on the Thursday. As they were the last people to see her alive, so they were the first to find her dead. They thought she had
slipped. They said she sometimes went up there to look at the view or watch the birds. She could have slipped. But after his contact with the Foreign Office, my lord, our Chief Constable quickly
discarded that theory. Or she could, of course, have jumped, the despatch of the Kennedys to the new granddaughter a perfect pretext for an uninterrupted suicide. But come, enough of this
speculation. Let me take you up to the tower before the light goes, my lord.’

Inspector Clayton led the way up one flight of stairs at the end of the library. ‘Constable Watchett probably told you he doesn’t approve of houses on water, my lord,’ he said,
continuing along a corridor that led into a bedroom and then a small chapel, perfectly equipped with pews and altar and crucifixes. ‘He doesn’t approve of higgledy piggledy houses
either, as he puts it, houses where all the stairs aren’t in the one place.’

They had now entered a long elegant drawing room with French tapestries on the walls and one or two expensive-looking pictures. Looking out of the window Powerscourt saw the moat again, from a
different angle this time, beguiling, seductive, mysterious. Inspector Clayton had stopped at the bottom of another staircase, this one in stone.

‘We don’t know, my lord,’ he said, ‘if she came the way we have just come, or if she came in from the other direction with the big bedroom, but she must have gone up this
stone staircase.’

He made his way up the steps, pausing to push open the wooden square at the top.

‘Was this locked normally?’ Powerscourt asked.

‘No, it wasn’t, my lord. There seemed little point, really. Nobody could reach the tower without going through the house and if anybody came with a young family Mr Kennedy would
always lock the door before they arrived.’

Now they were out on top of the little tower, on a platform not more than twelve feet square. To the west lay the cottages and other outbuildings that came with the estate. To the north, the
large lawn and the lake behind. To the east and the west, the woods that formed part of the Weald of Kent. Clayton tiptoed across to the point where the West Bridge lay almost directly beneath
them. ‘The doctors think this is where she must have gone from, my lord,’ said the Inspector, peering down at the water. ‘The parapet is dangerously low, as you can see. I expect
the coroner will say something about it at the inquest. They’re always very good at trying to close stable doors after the horses have bolted.’

‘Do they think she stood on the parapet and jumped? Or toppled over and fell?’ Powerscourt was feeling the pull of the water again. Heights, even heights as low as this, had always
unsettled him.

‘They don’t think it would have mattered. Her body would have crumpled – the doctor’s words, not mine – and the head would have shot forward to strike the stone
wall that is the side of the footbridge. They think that is what killed her.’

‘You mean the doctors aren’t sure?’

‘The poor woman was in the water for over forty-eight hours. They think the blow from the bridge did for her, but she drowned as well, if you see what I mean, just to be on the safe side,
perhaps. She was floating face down in the moat when the Kennedys found her, Kent’s answer to Ophelia.’

Powerscourt looked closely at Inspector Clayton. Police inspectors were not, in his experience, known for familiarity with the works of Shakespeare and the paintings of Waterhouse and Millais.
He wondered suddenly if Letitia Martin had known about Tamara Kerenkova, waltzing round the state rooms of St Petersburg with her, Letitia’s, husband. Had that, perhaps, been resolved between
them? Or had Martin’s return to the Russian capital, in his wife’s view, been the final betrayal of their love? Had the terrible irony been that Martin had, in fact, kept true to this
imagined promise of fidelity to his wife? For he had not been in touch with Tamara on his return to St Petersburg, a fact that had given Tamara considerable disquiet. Powerscourt stared down into
the water for answers that never came. He tried to imagine the despair Letitia Martin might feel if she thought Roderick had returned to her, only for him to betray her once again.

‘You look very pensive, my lord,’ said Clayton. ‘Does anything strike you about the circumstances up here?’

‘Only how short a distance you have to fall to kill yourself, Inspector. She could have slipped, of course. Or, as we both know, been pushed. I was trying to imagine how Mrs Martin might
have felt about her husband going back to Russia. She probably knew about the mistress, not necessarily the name but of her existence. Wives usually do. Now, it seems, he is going back to her. Any
stories he tells his wife about the extreme secrecy, only the Prime Minister knowing the full story and all that, will all sound like special pleading to her. After he goes, and then dies, she
grows increasingly miserable. It’s a double betrayal, first his going off to see that woman again, and then not being alive to be reproached for it. Her unhappiness deepens,

‘John Keats, my lord,’ said Inspector Clayton proudly. ‘Stanza six if my memory serves me.’

‘It serves you very well, I think, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Let me step back a little, as it were, from this fanciful speculation about Mrs Martin’s state of mind.
Was it wet that day? Would the stones underfoot have been slippery?’

‘It was wet, my lord. If there had been two people up here the rain would have washed away any traces of their feet, if you see what I mean. Do you wish to stop up here a little longer, my
lord? Or shall we go down and I’ll see if I can persuade the constable to make us some tea?’

Powerscourt took another look at the view from the little tower. He felt sure he would be up here again. ‘Some of Constable Watchett’s tea would be excellent, Inspector. There are a
number of points I would like to raise with you back in that splendid library, if I may,’ he said, making his way down the stairs and back the way they came. Once again the water in the moat,
its shifting elusive surfaces, the way it shimmered one minute and was absolutely still the next, fascinated him. Maybe the Powerscourt family could go and live in a house with a moat. He could sit
by a window and pretend to read a book while watching the changing behaviour of the surface of the water. He checked himself when he realized that somebody would have to be on call twenty-four
hours a day to pull the twins out after they fell in, which they surely would, several times a day.

Inspector Clayton removed the rope that had guarded Mrs Martin’s bay in the library and pulled up a couple of chairs. Constable Watchett had found some tasty fruit cake to accompany the
tea.

‘Will?’ said Powerscourt, the word muffled by the cake.

‘Will who?’ said Clayton, wondering if Powerscourt had discovered another suspect.

‘Sorry,’ said Powerscourt, washing his mouthful down with some of the constable’s excellent tea, ‘do we know if Mrs Martin left a will? Or,’ he said after a pause,
‘come to that, Mr Martin?’

The Inspector sighed. Powerscourt seemed to have touched a sensitive point. ‘I have to confess, my lord,’ he began, ‘that I feel bad about this will business, very bad. The
family solicitors are Evans Watkinson and Ragg over at Tonbridge. When I started this case, I’ll be honest with you, my lord, I had a mass of work to finish off from two other cases. So I
asked Constable Watchett to write to them on my behalf.’ Powerscourt wondered if the letter had been laced with home-spun wisdom better suited to the local pub than to a solicitor’s
office. ‘Anyway, my lord, a letter came back, addressed to me, suggesting I remember my duties, which include liaising with the deceased’s solicitors, before asking ill-qualified
members of the constabulary to address their betters. I have written a letter of apology, but they have still not replied. It was not well done, my lord, and now my Chief Constable asks about the
wills every other day.’

Powerscourt smiled at the Inspector. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I remember similar problems of bureaucracy and administration in South Africa. Give me the address for Evans
Watkinson and Ragg before I go this evening, and I will call on them tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, my lord, thank you very much. I may say that I found no sign of any wills in the desks of either Martin, but they could have decided to keep them with the lawyers for
safety.’

‘Let me ask you something else, Inspector, something that I think might have led to Mrs Martin’s death. Is there any sign that she received any letters or cables from her husband
while he was in Russia?’

‘Cables? Not that I have seen so far, my lord.’

‘This is going to sound preposterous, Inspector, so please make allowances for a tired investigator whose wits may have been sapped by prolonged exposure to the Russian temperament and the
Russian climate.’ Powerscourt took another draught of the Watchett tea and promised himself a further piece of cake if he could make his proposal believable.

‘It goes something like this. Martin, you will remember, saw the Tsar in his country palace about fifteen miles from St Petersburg. Furthermore, Martin saw the Tsar on his own. That means
the questions under discussion must have been of the utmost importance, questions of the highest national policy, questions so sensitive that Tsar Nicholas didn’t want anybody else to hear
about them. Let us suppose, however, that somebody else in the entourage gets an inkling of what they talked about. They pursue Martin back to St Petersburg. Before they find him he sends a message
to his wife, telling her what he knows. When the somebody else and his colleagues catch up with Martin, they torture him until he tells what he knows, including the fact that he has passed the
information on to his wife. They kill him, and dump the body on the frozen river. A few weeks later, they come here and kill his wife, leaving the body in the moat. By the time the Kennedys find
Mrs Martin, the killer or killers have reached Hamburg or Berlin on their journey back to St Petersburg.’

Inspector Clayton peered outside at the fading of the light. Soon it would be dark and he always found the place oppressive then.

‘There’s only one query I have with that premise, my lord,’ said Inspector Clayton, eyeing Powerscourt carefully as he tucked in to another slice of fruit cake. ‘If you
are being tortured, not that I am an expert, mind you, but suppose you have told your enemies what you know. Why do you need to tell them you have sent a message to somebody else as
well?’

‘That’s a very fair observation, Inspector,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘Let me try to answer it. The answer, I believe, lies in the psychology of torturer and tortured, if you
follow me. The torturer believes that there is always one further piece of information to be extracted from his victim, no matter how much he has dragged out of him already. And the tortured man
thinks he would have attained relief by disclosing the most important thing he knows. But he hasn’t. Why can’t they leave him in peace? So he throws them one more titbit, in the hope
that the pain will finally stop. By this stage, that is probably all he can think of.’

‘Thank God we live in a civilized society where these things don’t happen,’ said the Inspector. ‘There are a couple of things you need to be aware of, my lord. I’ve
just heard your cab coming down the hill, so I’ll be brief. The first I have no direct knowledge of, merely station gossip. There is or there was some feud about the ownership of this house,
Lord Powerscourt. There was a long court case between different branches of the Martin family before Roderick and Letitia took up residence.’