The Rasputin File (79 page)

And that case file, along with other documents, will help us to establish a true picture of the mysterious Yusupov night.

The Police Account

According to the case file, when Felix was personally interrogated by Minister of Justice Makarov, the inquiry already had at its disposal the most interesting testimony of the two constables. The testimony of both men is contained in the case file.

The forty-eight-year-old constable, Stepan Vlasyuk, who was on duty not far from the Yusupov palace, reported: ‘Around three or four in the morning I heard three or four shots quickly following one another.’ Vlasyuk went up to the constable Efimov, who was on duty nearby on the other side of the Moika canal.

[In answer]’To my question as to where the shooting had been, Efimov indicated the Yusupov palace.’ Vlasyuk set off for the palace. Next to it he met the building custodian. But the latter said he hadn’t heard any shots. ‘At the time,’ Vlasyuk testified, ‘I saw crossing the courtyard in the direction of the gate two men in military jackets but no hats, in whom I recognized Prince Yusupov and his butler Buzhinsky. I asked the latter what the shooting had been. He replied that he hadn’t heard any shots.’ After which Vlasyuk, his mind now set at ease, went back to his post. ‘I didn’t inform
anyone about what had happened, because I had heard such sounds before from bursting automobile tyres. But after fifteen or twenty minutes, Buzhinsky came over to me and said that Prince Yusupov was asking for me. No sooner had I crossed the threshold of Prince Yusupov’s study than he came to meet me with someone I didn’t know with a reddish beard and moustache … and a khaki military jacket.’

Vlasyuk then related a remarkable conversation.

The person asked me, ‘Have you ever heard of Purishkevich?’ ‘I have.’

‘I am Purishkevich. And have you ever heard of Rasputin? Well, Rasputin is dead. And if you love our mother Russia, you’ll keep quiet about it.’ ‘Yes, sir.’

‘You can go now.’

‘About twenty minutes later, Kalyadin, the district police officer, came to me and I reported everything to him.’

A Woman’s Cry And A
Mysterious Automobile

The second constable, Fyodor Efimov, across the canal from the Yusupov palace, was fifty-nine years old — an old, experienced policeman. He reported:

‘At 2: 30 a.m. I heard a shot, and three or four seconds later, I heard the sound of three or four more shots in quick succession. After the first shot, I heard a not loud cry, as if from a woman.’

In reply to the investigator’s question about an automobile arriving at or leaving the palace after the shots were fired, Efimov reported, ‘For twenty or thirty minutes no automobile or horse cab passed along the Moika. It was only a half hour later… that an automobile drove past, although it didn’t stop anywhere.’

We shall remember that both policemen watching the building testified about having heard three or four shots at the Yusupov palace. And that Efimov, the one who was closer, also heard ‘a not loud cry, as if from a woman’. And one other important detail — that no automobile went to the palace after the shots. The only automobile seen was one that drove from the direction of the palace half an hour after the shots.

The inquiry had this testimony to hand when Felix Felixovich — Prince Yusupov and Count Sumarokov-Elston — was interrogated on 18 December.
After telling the story of his acquaintance with Rasputin, Felix turned to ‘that evening’.

‘It Was The Grand Duke Who Had Killed The Dog’

At the time I was redoing … a room in my house on the Moika … and the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich suggested I have a house-warming party. It was decided to invite to it Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich and several officers and society ladies. The party was planned for 16 December … For reasons you can readily understand, I don’t want to give the names of the officers and ladies; it could damage them and give rise to false rumours. In order not to hamper my guests, I ordered the servants to lay out everything for tea and supper … and then not come in. The majority of the guests were supposed to come not by the front door …but by the side entrance … to which I had my own key. Those who gathered drank tea and danced. Around 12:30 Rasputin called from somewhere … inviting us to go to the Gypsies. To which the guests responded with jokes and wisecracks…Rasputin wouldn’t tell me where he was calling from. But voices could be heard over the phone, as well as a woman’s squeal.

Makarov could have tripped Felix up here with the testimony of Rasputin’s household. But the minister did not dare impugn a kinsman of the tsar with the testimony of a servant and a peasant’s daughters. And the prince continued:

Around 2–2:30 a.m. the … ladies were ready to go home, and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich went with them … After they had left, I heard shots in the courtyard. I went into the courtyard and saw a dog lying dead by the gate. His imperial highness subsequently informed me that it was he who had killed the dog … After that I called in the constable from the street and told him that if anyone should ask about the shots, to say that a friend of mine had killed a dog.

A question apparently then followed about Purishkevich’s words to the constable. The prince’s answer is amusing.

After that Purishkevich, who was in my study, started speaking. I didn’t catch everything he said …In regard to the constable’s testimony that Purishkevich allegedly told him in my study that Rasputin had been killed, Purishkevich was drunk, and I don’t recall what he said … I wasn’t at Rasputin’s on the 16th either in the afternoon or in the evening, as my
guests and servants can corroborate. Some people have given serious thought to a murder plan and have linked it to me and the party in my home.

A Sensation At The Station

Felix had sent similar testimony to the tsarina the day before. Afterwards, on the evening of 18 December, he finally got ready to take the train to the Crimea. But…

From the diary of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich for 18 December:

The next day, still not having seen Yusupov, I learned that Felix…and my nephews were leaving for the Crimea. But the rumours continued unabated all day, and A. F. Trepov informed me on the 18th by telephone that very probably Rasputin really had been killed, and that Dmitry Pavlovich, Felix Yusupov, and Purishkevich had been persistently named as involved in the murder … I breathed more easily and quietly sat down to play cards, glad that scoundrel would be causing no more harm, but afraid Trepov’s information might be false.

At 9:00 p.m. I visited my nephews and bade them farewell … What was my surprise when at 10:30 Felix called me up and said that he had been detained by a gendarme officer at Nikolaev Station, and that he very much asked that I drop by to see him. Felix was already in bed. I spent half an hour with him listening to his confidences.

Felix repeated verbatim to Nikolai Mikhailovich the story that he had told Minister of Justice Makarov. But the grand duke already knew about the rumours.

‘I listened to his narrative in silence and then told him the following: his fiction wouldn’t stand up to any criticism, and that… he was the murderer.’

The next morning all Petrograd was abuzz with the sensational news that Prince Yusupov had been detained the night before at the Nikolaev Station. That the train to the Crimea had left without him.

‘I Greet You, Gentlemen Murderers!’

Felix had not merely been detained; he had been placed under house arrest. The tsarina had demanded that the inquiry get the truth. Grand Duke Dmitry had been placed under house arrest, too. But the arrest was a highly peculiar one. Felix moved to Dmitry’s house the next day, which gave them the opportunity to work out a common story in anticipation of the investigator’s summons. But they wouldn’t be summoned by the investigator
any more. The tsar was fond of history. And he remembered the events of the French revolution. The public examination of the case implicating Marie Antoinette in the theft of the queen’s necklace had been the prologue of the end of Louis XVI. That is why when Rasputin’s corpse came to the river’s surface on 19 December, General Popov was ordered to end the inquiry.

By then the police had already intercepted the first congratulatory telegrams sent to Dmitry and Felix. Those from the God-fearing Ella must have especially stunned Nicholas II. She, the meek intercessor, had written to Dmitry: ‘18 December, 9:30 a.m….I just returned late last night after spending the whole week in Sarov and Diveev praying for all you dear ones. I ask you to send me a letter with the details of the events. May God give Felix strength after the patriotic act performed by him.’ And she sent another telegram to the Crimea to Zinaida Yusupova: ‘All my ardent and profound prayers surround all of you for the patriotic act of your dear son.’ So Ella, having only just returned from Diveev on 18 December, already knew all about the murder and the murderers. And she blessed the murder. She lacked only the details that Felix would tell Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich the day after after the murder.

From the diary of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich: ‘The next day, the 19th, after Felix had moved to the apartment of Dmitry Pavlovich, I blurted out upon entering the room, “I greet you, gentlemen murderers!” ‘ And seeing that resistance was ‘pointless’, Felix began his story.

The Story Of The Murder As Told By The Murderers

Afterwards in Paris Felix Yusupov would publish his memoirs of the murder in a variety of editions. In them he would basically repeat what he had told Nikolai Mikhailovich on that evening in Petrograd.

At the same time, however, there is another story about everything that happened at the Yusupov palace, written down by another participant in the murder.

Unlike Felix, the Duma member Purishkevich had succeeded in getting out of the city. His hospital train safely left for the front the day after the murder. Purishkevich wrote continuously in his car, describing what happened. ‘I am surrounded by the deep of night and utter silence, while my train, gently swaying, carries me off into the distance … I cannot sleep
… the events of the last forty-eight hours whirl through my mind … Rasputin is no more, he has been killed…It has pleased fate for him to fall at my hand … Thank goodness that the hand of Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich has not been stained with that dirty blood.’ And he explains: ‘The royal youth must not be guilty of…any matter connected to the spilling of blood. Even if it is the blood of Rasputin.’ We shall remember that: ‘the royal youth must not be guilty.’ And then Purishkevich proceeds to his narrative.

It is in fact on the basis of those two sources — Yusupov’s and Purishkevich’s memoirs — that the story of Rasputin’s murder has been repeated from book to book. It is a story that, as Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich wrote in his diary, is ‘reminiscent…of murder in medieval Italy’. Or, more accurately, of the thriller so popular in Rasputin’s time and our own, in which a terrible demon is killed by human heroes. Sensing that element of trashy fiction, Leon Trotsky would call the story ‘tasteless’. Its resemblance to ‘literature’ already puts you very much on your guard. And the more carefully you read about it, the more suspect it seems.

Let us first permit the two murderers to speak for themselves, however.

‘An Evening Of Unforgettable Nightmare’

Purishkevich: ‘I shall try to recount with photographic accuracy the whole course of the historically significant drama that unfolded. On that night… the weather was a mild two to three degrees above freezing and wet snow was falling.’

And in that wet snow a military automobile rare for those times appeared at the Yusupov Palace. The automobile stood for a while, then departed, then came back again. And then, finally, it drove up to the palace’s main entrance.

In the automobile, as Purishkevich writes, were himself and Dr Lazavert, who was sitting in for the driver. According to the agreement, they were supposed to drive into the courtyard up to the side entrance so as to enter the building unnoticed. But the courtyard gate was closed. Purishkevich realized the silly Felix had forgotten all about their compact.

Purishkevich: ‘After circling a couple of times we drove up to the main entrance.’ And from there they passed into Yusupov’s study, where the others had already gathered (the grand duke, Felix, and Lieutenant Sukhotin). Felix greeted Purishkevich and Lazavert as if nothing was the matter. But they
were in no mood for explanations. They all quickly went downstairs to the basement, where Purishkevich, delighted by its transformation ‘into an elegant
honhonniére
in the style of the ancient Russian palaces’, forgot his anger.

‘That charming room,’ Purishkevich wrote, ‘was divided into two parts: the front one nearer the fireplace was a sort of miniature dining room… A fire was cosily burning in the fireplace, on the mantle stood a magnificent ivory crucifix, and under the window there was a small table with bottles — sherry, port, madeira, and marsala. The rear part of the room was a sitting room with a polar bear skin on the floor…in front of a settee.’

They sat down at the table in the ‘dining room’, and Yusupov suggested they sample the pastries prepared for Rasputin before stuffing them with the poison. The pastries were well matched to the dining room — ‘little pink and brown petits fours chosen to complement the colour of the wall’. They drank tea and nervously ‘waited for 11:30 when the spies would abandon Rasputin’s apartment’. Felix knew that the external surveillance would be lifted then, as well. After finishing their tea, they ‘tried to make it look like a whole group had been scared off by the arrival of an unexpected guest’. They poured a little tea in the cups and scattered wrinkled napkins on the table. Then Dr Lazavert put on gloves and began to chip the poison — pellets of potassium cyanide — onto a plate for inserting into the little pastries with the pink cream filling. The chocolate pastries were left unpoisoned (for Felix). Lazavert ‘thickly sprinkled the poison inside the pastries’. After completing that rather awful task, Lazavert tossed the gloves into the fireplace, which ‘started smoking, so that the room had to be aired out’. Then he changed into a chauffeur’s uniform. Felix threw a fur coat over his shoulders and ‘pulled his fur cap down over his ears so that his face was completely hidden’. And shortly after, those remaining behind heard the sound an automobile pulling away.