Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (6 page)

‘Please forgive me, Lucy,’ Rosebery began, ‘for calling on you out of the blue like this. I will be perfectly honest with you, my dear. I am here at the special request of the
Prime Minister and the Foreign Office about this Russian business. I feel I am better placed talking to you than I would be talking to Francis. That Foreign Office fellow thinks I can change
Francis’s mind. I am not so sure. Only you, I believe, can do that.’

Lady Lucy remembered that Rosebery, whatever his weaknesses as Prime Minister, was a famous orator. Even in conversation, she felt, you could imagine him on some lofty platform haranguing the
faithful by the thousands. This fastidious aristocrat, she remembered, was the man who had attended a Democratic Party Convention in New York with its cheering and its fireworks and its torch-lit
processions and its pre-planned spontaneous demonstrations of enthusiasm for particular candidates, and had brought some of those techniques back to Britain when he organized Gladstone’s
Midlothian Campaign.

‘I want to put a theory to you, Lucy. It’s only a theory, you understand.’ Rosebery smiled and Lady Lucy suddenly felt afraid. ‘After Francis was shot you went abroad a
couple of years ago, just the two of you, to Italy, if my memory serves me. My theory is that on that holiday, or shortly after you returned, you persuaded Francis to give up investigating. You did
it for perfectly understandable reasons, of course, four children, two of them tiny, a long history of danger and attempts on his life of one sort of another. I have known Francis for a very long
time. I remember when he began investigating even while he was still in the army with a terrible murder case in Simla. I know how he thought of it as a form of public service, making sure the world
was rid of some wicked murderers who might kill again. I do not think he would ever have volunteered to give it up of his own accord. It would be like asking W.G. Grace to abandon cricket or Mr
Wells to stop writing his stories. Only you could have done it, Lucy. Am I right?’

Feeling guilty and defiant at the same time, Lady Lucy nodded her head. Rosebery held up his hand as if to forbid her from speaking.

‘Please let me continue, Lucy. So. That skeletal person from the Foreign Office thinks I am now going to persuade you to change your mind. I am not going to do anything of the sort. But I
would just like you to think of certain things, if I may.’

And then, to the immense satisfaction of Lady Lucy, he rose from his chair and began pacing up and down her drawing room in exactly the same manner as her husband. Maybe all men, she reflected,
have a built-in urge to walk an imaginary quarterdeck like Nelson in pursuit of some elusive French fleet or Spanish galleon, laden with treasure and the spoils of war.

‘I should like you to think about courage, Lucy. Not just courage in battle by land or sea, though there are some awesome examples of that in our recent history. The courage of those with
mortal illnesses and of those looking after them. The courage to go on living and caring for children after the death of a husband or wife. The courage to carry on when overwhelmed by melancholy or
despair. And then think of what happens, not if courage is taken away, but if the opportunity to display courage is taken away. I spoke a moment ago of W.G. Grace being asked to give up cricket.
Let us perhaps think of Mr Gladstone or Lord Salisbury being asked to give up politics in their time. That, in a way, is what Francis has had to do in giving up investigating. He has had to show as
much courage in renouncing it as you have shown in asking him to do so. But think of what it must have cost him. That fool of a junior minister virtually accused him of being a coward the other
day. Francis is not just being denied the opportunity to show what he can do, he is being denied the opportunity to display his courage once again. I do not know what effect that will have. Some
men could rise above it. With others it could eat away at their very souls.’

Rosebery stopped pacing suddenly to peer into Markham Square. Then he returned to his quarterdeck.

‘I want you to think about patriotism, Lucy, about the love of country. Maybe I should say the chance to serve one’s country, to show how much you care by offering to lay down your
life for her. In the Funeral Speech in Book Two of Thucydides’
The Peloponnesian War
, Pericles tells his fellow citizens to fix their eyes on the glory that is Athens and to fall in
love with her. Then they can show their true courage on the battlefield or at the oars of their triremes. Francis has shown a very great deal of that courage during his life. Now he is being denied
the opportunity to display it once again. When your first husband went off to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum, Lucy, you did not ask him to stay at home in case he was killed. When Francis went
off to the Boer War you did not plead with him to change his mind. You went to the railway station and waved him off, even though you must have known he might never come back.

‘And finally, Lucy, I want you to think about peace and about your children. When I was Foreign Secretary all those years ago, it looked as if the long peace would go on for ever. War, a
European war, seemed inconceivable. Now I am not so sure. The diplomats scurry round from capital to capital thinking up alliances, leagues, defensive groupings, pacts of co-operation if attacked
by a third party. The shipyards of the major powers are racing against time and each other to produce deadlier and deadlier vessels, laden with the most lethal armaments man can invent. I recently
bought a book of photographs from the American Civil War, Lucy, the most recent example of prolonged industrialized warfare. The injuries are horrendous, limbs ripped off, intestines blown away,
heads cut off at the neck, bodies literally split in two. In the years after the conflict there were more cripples in Alabama than able-bodied men. And what has this to do with St Petersburg?
Simply this, Lucy, simply this. I do not know the nature of the dead man’s mission but I believe the Prime Minister when he says it could make peace more likely. Peace means there will be no
war. I met your Robert, your lovely son from your first marriage, at a dinner at his Oxford college a couple of weeks ago. It happens to be my college too. I do not want to think of that young man
in uniform risking his life on some wretched battlefield in France. I do not like to think of all those young men at his college marching off to war. Nor do I like to think of my godson Master
Thomas Powerscourt in the same position. Maybe they would all come back safely. Maybe nobody would. Peace means the young men can stay alive. War means many of them will die. If the St Petersburg
project brings peace a little closer, we have to think of it very seriously indeed.’

With that, Rosebery finished his pacing up and down. He bowed slightly to Lady Lucy as if he were a European rather than an Englishman and resumed his position seated opposite her.

‘I shall think of what you said, Lord Rosebery, of course I shall. I shall think of it very seriously.’ Lady Lucy was grave in her reply. ‘You have, for most of the time, used
male arguments against me. Only at the end did you find a tone that might appeal to a wife and mother. You see, Lord Rosebery, you can see, you can almost touch, all those treaties and pacts, great
long documents drawn up by one country’s lawyers and criticized by another’s. These are real to you in a way they are not to me. I see two-year-old twins without a father, fated never
to see Francis again. I see myself – when he was nearly dead in that house in Manchester Square I saw this all the time – at his funeral, holding the hands of Thomas and Olivia, both of
them crying till you would think their hearts must break, knowing that when the coffin slides into the earth that is the last they will ever see of their father in this world. Forgive me, Lord
Rosebery, I rather wish you hadn’t come. I’m really upset now.’

With Lady Lucy on the verge of tears, Lord Rosebery took his leave very quietly. As he walked back to the Foreign Office he wondered what lever, if any, would make Lady Lucy change her mind.

Lady Lucy seriously wondered about setting off on the long march up the family drawing room that was so popular with the males. But she stood instead, leaning against the
fireplace and wishing Francis was home. She wondered about what Lord Rosebery had said. Was she really taking away Francis’s manhood? Was she denying him the chance to show his courage? Did
men have to do that all the time? Surely he had displayed enough courage to last many a lifetime. Was she trying to undermine him, to deny him the chance to show the world what he could do? No, she
was only trying to keep him alive. Surely any wife would want that for her husband?

Had Lady Lucy gone to the tall window and looked out into the street she would have seen a cab draw up with two people inside. One seemed to be a very tall man who opened the door for his
companion from the inside as if he did not want to be seen, the other a striking lady in her late thirties dressed entirely in black, right down to the fashionable black gloves she folded away as
she advanced to the Powerscourt front door.

‘Mrs Martin to see you, Lady Powerscourt.’ Rhys the butler announced their guest with his usual cough.

Lady Lucy held out her hand. ‘How do you do, Mrs Martin,’ she said formally, ‘I don’t think we have met before.’

‘No, we have not.’ Mrs Martin sounded rather nervous as if her mission, whatever it was, seemed more formidable in reality than it had appeared before.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Lady Lucy was growing suspicious about her visitor, so correct in her mourning clothes. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Martin, taking up her position in Powerscourt’s favourite armchair by the side of the fireplace. ‘I think I had better explain myself, Lady
Powerscourt. You must forgive me for coming in like this. I think you know of my husband, my late husband. Roderick Martin was the man found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt in St Petersburg. That is
the death the Foreign Office wished your husband to investigate.’

Lady Lucy turned pale. Her suspicions had been right. Death had come all the way from Russia’s capital to her drawing room in Markham Square. But what did this spectre in black want of
her?

‘I am so sorry,’ Lady Lucy managed to say. ‘It must be terrible for you.’

‘What I find particularly upsetting, Lady Powerscourt, is that I know so little of the circumstances. I know my husband went to Russia to carry out some sort of work for the Foreign
Office. I cannot find out what that work was. They simply refuse to tell me. I do not know why Roderick died. I do not think the Foreign Office know that either. I cannot get them to recover the
body and return it to us for a proper English burial. He could have been dumped out to sea for all I know. We have no children, Lady Powerscourt, but Roderick’s parents are still alive. They
find the not knowing even more difficult than I do. They are on the verge of tears or breaking down almost every minute of the day. Roderick’s father said that his heart would break if he
could not bury his only son.’

Mrs Martin paused. Still Lady Lucy did not know what was coming.

‘I’m not quite sure how I can help,’ said Lady Lucy, suspecting that almost anything she said to this newly bereaved woman would be wrong.

‘I’m surprised you can’t see it, Lady Powerscourt,’ Mrs Martin replied, staring coldly at her hostess. ‘I told you, it’s the not knowing that’s the most
difficult thing. Even after the drink and the sleeping draughts, that’s what keeps his old parents awake every night. It eats you up, like some parasite that chews out your insides. You see,
Lady Powerscourt, the Foreign Office told us they were going to send a special man to find out the truth about what happened to Roderick. They said he was the best man in the country for this sort
of work. We all felt better for a day or two after that. We thought we were going to find out the truth. Maybe this miracle worker could even come back with the body as well and my husband could be
laid to rest in his graveyard. But it didn’t happen. The special man isn’t going. He’s not going to find out what really happened. You know as well as I do who that special man is
and you know as well as I do who the special woman is who’s stopping him. One of those Foreign Office people told me that if it was up to your husband, he’d take the commission and go
to St Petersburg tomorrow. You’re the one who’s stopping him. You’re the one bringing misery to all that’s left of my family. You’re the one who’s torturing
those two old people who’ll never see their only son again.’

‘You don’t understand, Mrs Martin.’ Lady Lucy was close to tears. ‘Francis, my husband, has nearly been killed so often in these investigations. It happens almost every
time. Last time he was at death’s door with the twins only a few weeks old. Imagine their growing up without a father.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Lady Powerscourt,’ Mrs Martin spoke very slowly now, ‘but it’s you who don’t understand. You think you have rights that nobody else has,
rights to hold on to your husband because he was nearly killed once or twice. Think what would happen if everybody behaved as selfishly as you. Wellington’s army and his commanders would
never have driven the French out of Spain or won their great victory at Waterloo if their wives hadn’t let them go. We would now be living in some French department with a French prefect
enforcing French laws in the French language from a French town hall with a French tricolour flying from the top and statues of Napoleon in every town square. What would happen to the Royal Navy if
the wives refused to let their men go back to sea, whining about the fact that they might get killed in some naval engagement? There can’t be one set of rules for you and another set of rules
for everybody else. We owe certain duties to society as society owes certain duties to us. But the duties have to be the same for everybody. Your rules are entirely selfish. They would lead to a
feeble rather than a Great Britain. They would lead to a nation where every man could opt for cowardice rather than courage. We wouldn’t have an empire. I doubt we would have our liberty. I
think you pretend your rules show the mark of courage when they show the opposite. You’re turning your husband into a coward, or that’s what everybody will think.’