Rasputin's Revenge (15 page)

(
OCTOBER
19, 1916.)

W
hen Lupa arrived, he suggested we go into St. Petersburg for dinner, and though I’d only returned from there a few hours earlier, I acquiesced. The train ride is really only a minor inconvenience, over almost before it begins.

Lupa had heard that the Villa Rhode boasted an extremely delicious solyanka d’esturgeon and he had made a reservation there. The restaurant, on the extreme outskirts of the city on the right bank of the Neva, was a good long walk from the train station, and on the way there, as the first flakes of a new snowstorm began to fall, Lupa had the opportunity to outline his suspicions.

“In a way,” he began, “we are fortunate. The court is such a tightly knit unit, and in general so closely watched, that our murderer must be one of a relatively small group of people.”

“Have you narrowed it down at all?”

He nodded. “It’s odd. The murders have been by poison, bomb and knife. They could almost have been committed by different people.”

“Or directed by a different intelligence?” I offered.

“Exactly. I’ve thought of that. But I tend to discount it.”

“Why?”

We rounded a corner onto the Nevsky Prospekt, and the bustling street of earlier that morning was nowhere in evidence. The storefronts were boarded. Only an occasional automobile rumbled by in the swirling snow. The streetlights hissed as we passed beneath them, their pools of yellow light doing little except marking the curbs.

Lupa turned up his collar against the wind. “I am going on the assumption that our motive here is the one we’ve discussed. Are you still willing to stand by that?”

I nodded. “I think so. Before I knew you were here, Paleologue told me about the killings, and believed their aim was to weaken the Czar’s will.”

“There’s no doubt it makes sense,” he said, “but is there another possibility?”

“Of course. There is always another possibility.”

I heard him chuckle under his greatcoat. “Just so. Well said, Jules.”

“But in this case,” I continued, “nothing else makes much sense. Especially since you’ve been sent for. Alexandra must believe it.”

“All right, then, if we agree on motive, and we do, then there remains …”

“Means and opportunity.”

We had passed by the Winter Palace and were crossing the Neva. Snow clung to its banks, but the gray water had not yet iced over—we heard its churning flow around the pilings under us. Then the Fortress of Ss. Peter & Paul loomed ahead, and I swear I could feel the despair of the incarcerated through the thick stone walls. How many of them, I wondered, had committed any real crime? And how many would live to be free again?

“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing Lupa had been talking. “Could you repeat that?”

“I said the bombs ought to narrow things down. Who could get access to bombs?”

I thought about it. “Or who could make one?”

Lupa shook his head. “No. I think not. These were small and very efficient weapons. Since I wasn’t here to examine the victims, I can’t be sure, but the reports I’ve read seem to point more to grenades than to true bombs.”

“Well, then, wouldn’t anyone in the army …?”

Lupa stopped. “In France, it’s true that anyone in the army would have grenades. But what have we heard about supplies here in Russia? That even bullets are hard to come by,
n’est-ce pas?”

He was right.

“Then we might expect,” he continued, “that only someone with real access to munitions might …”

“Sukhomlinov,” I said.

“It’s a thought. Or someone in a similar position. Ah, I believe we are here.”

The street in front of the restaurant was lined with black automobiles, attesting to its popularity. From inside came the sound of gypsy guitar music. Lupa stood outside the door for a moment sniffing the air.

“The first test of a restaurant,” he said. Seemingly satisfied, he pushed open the door and held it for me. Inside, the warm air was suffused with the aromas of a well-stocked and professional kitchen. As our coats were taken, Lupa gave his name, and the maitre d’ rushed up to shake his hand.

“Auguste Lupa,” he said, “this is a great honor.”

Lupa bowed. “The honor is mine, Monsieur Muret. May I present a friend, Jules Giraud.”

Muret took us to a booth in the back of the crowded room, and I surveyed the scene. It was not the most plush of restaurants, catering as it did to those who fancied gypsy music. Still, there was a genuine sense of enjoyment in the atmosphere. Talk was loud, the ambience robust.

When the waiter brought a large pitcher of beer for our first courses, I knew Lupa had picked the right place. We both share a fondness for beer—it had been the basis of our original acquaintance—and we drank the first glasses in companionable silence. The solyanka d’esturgeon turned out to be a variation of the fish stew I’d had two or three times since my arrival here, although at the Villa Rhode it was made of the best ingredients. With black bread and fresh butter, it was quite good, although I would never understand Lupa’s rapturous praise for the dish—it paled beside the simplest saffron-laden bouillabaise.

But then, I remind myself, we are a long way from France.

Five pitchers of beer had come and gone, along with our stew, when the owner Muret approached our table. Lupa was effusive in his compliments over the dish and I feigned enthusiasm as well. We invited him to join us, and when he sat down he ordered a round of schnapps.

The gypsies were playing louder. During dinner, three men had been strumming guitars on a small raised platform in one corner of the room. Just before we’d finished eating, an old woman, with a voice of exceptional pathos and power, had stilled the room with a stirring rendition of “The Swan Song.” Now, as the schnapps arrived, she began another song, with more of a beat, and the crowd began to respond by swaying and clapping.

“Is that Varya Panina?” Lupa asked.

Muret nodded. “The greatest living gypsy singer. We are fortunate to have her.”

We listened to the song, its raw yet plaintive melody forcing its way into the consciousness. I found myself moving in time to the guitars, and when the singing stopped, it was as though I was coming out of sleep. The
woman—who was quite ugly—had created something that was transcendently beautiful and nearly addictive.

As we finished applauding, there was a commotion in the back of the room. A door to a private dining area had flown open and a small party of diners, seemingly quite drunk, issued into the main salon. At its center, with what looked like common prostitutes on each arm, was Gregory Rasputin.

He called out loudly. “Another, Varya! Another!” he yelled as he staggered up toward the stage. “Let’s have another song.” He sat himself down in the midst of the performers and called for a bottle of Madeira.

Lupa leaned over to Muret. “Who is that cretin?” he asked in a whisper.

Muret shushed him. “Be careful what you say. That is Rasputin.”

The monk had his wine, and was trying to prod one of the members of his party into singing along with Varya. The other diners seemed to take this display in stride. Indeed, I got the feeling that some might have come for just such a show. Lupa, however, did not find it entertaining.

“The man’s a fool, and he’s drunk,” he said.

“He may be drunk, but he’s no fool,” Muret responded.

“The gypsies are robbing me! Somebody help!” Rasputin had fallen backwards on the platform, and three or four gypsies were endeavoring to help him up. “They’re picking my pockets! Stop them!”

It all had the quality of being rehearsed, and I must say the monk, the diners, even the gypsies appeared to be enjoying themselves. The guitarists struck up another round of chords, and Rasputin began singing, loudly and out of key, urging the rest of the crowd to join in, which many of them did.

I noticed, though no one else appeared to, that Varya Panina had left the stage. Lupa tapped me on the shoulder and indicated that he, too, had had enough. As we were getting up, Muret shrugged, clearly saying that events such as this were out of his control, that he wasn’t happy, but the patrons seemed to enjoy themselves, and he had a business to consider.

Lupa bowed, muttered a perfunctory thank-you, and marched through the crowd across the room. I trailed behind by a few steps. At the cloakroom, we paused for another minute, listening to the “most powerful man in Russia” lead the room in a chorus of vulgar song. Lupa didn’t even wait inside to button his coat. As soon as it was handed to him, he pushed impatiently at the door and was outside.

Down the street from the Villa Rhode, we passed a lone figure huddled under an awning. Lupa stopped before we’d quite come to it, then walked over and extended his hand.

“You were magnificent,” he said. “I am sorry for that … for that embarrassment.”

Varya Panina raised a tearstained face to my friend, then took his hand and smiled feebly. “It will be over in an hour. Then I will sing again. We get our strength from our pain. Rasputin, like everything else, will pass.”

There was nothing more to say. We nodded to the singer and made our way back toward St. Petersburg in a brooding silence, the wet snow thickening under our boots. On the bridge across the Neva, a black limousine came roaring by us, much too close to the curb. We were spattered with slush and someone leaned out the window, laughing and yelling obscenities.

Lupa and I wiped the snow from our coats. When we had gone another fifty meters, my friend suddenly spoke without breaking his stride. “It could be we are already too late,” he said. “Russia may be lost.”

I had to be in St. Petersburg in the morning again, so I elected to stay at my room in the Winter Palace. As in my own case, Lupa had been given suites in both Tsarkoye Selo and the Palace and he suggested we stop by his rooms before going to bed.

There, he offered me some tea with lemon. Though I was tired, the long walk had given Lupa time to think. He had evidently overcome his feeling that it was too late to do anything about saving Russia.

“I’m curious about Borstoi’s comment the other night,” he said. “You remember when Pohl was having him thrown out of the kitchen? He said he’d already done a great deal of damage. I wonder what he meant by that, if perhaps you’d be able to find out.”

“Do you think it could be Borstoi?”

Lupa shrugged. “We’re just beginning. It’s wise to suspect everyone. Minsky was poisoned and he was in possession of poison.”

“But by the same token, Auguste, Pohl seemed quite ready to use a knife on Borstoi. And one of the killings was a cut throat,
n’est-ce pas?”

Lupa sat back in a wing chair. “I have no suspicion of Max, although you’re right, I should have.” He seemed to mull over that possibility for a moment, then straightened in his chair and continued. “But let’s still find what we can about Borstoi. If anything, he has a surfeit of motive—personal on two levels—as well as political. I wonder if he could have had access to a grenade, or if he is friendly with anyone else at court besides Max. It’s worth pursuing.”

We decided that the best approach would be for me to pretend that I was sympathetic to Borstoi’s cause. He would probably be convinced of my sincerity by the very fact that I had come to visit him. That alone could be construed as a treasonous act, given my position with Alexis and my
public mission to the Czar. If that were not enough to gain his confidence, Lupa and I would come up with something else later.

I had finished my tea and was ready to go to bed. “So,” I said, putting on my coat again, “we have Sukhomlinov, Borstoi and Pohl.”

“In fact we have nothing,” he said. “But it would be wise to keep in mind everyone we might suspect.”

“There are others besides those three?”

“Surely you didn’t think Katrina Sukhomlinov acted normally at Anastasia’s? Did you see her reaction when I mentioned Minsky? She ran crying from the room. No, she is involved in something we’re not aware of.”

“But could she have killed Minsky?”

He shrugged. “Both she and her husband were at Tsarkoye Selo that night. It is hardly significant that they Weren’t at Vyroubova’s party.”

Frowning, he went on, stirring what remained in his cup with his forefinger. “And we might as well include Ivan Kapov. Think of his comments at Anastasia’s. He left me with the strong impression that he would stop at nothing to get the separate peace, and he seems to be a man of action, not just rhetoric.”

He drained his cup in a last swallow. “More tea? No? You’re right, it’s late.” He put the cup down. “But it’s still too early to make any judgments. We could even include Elena Ripley since she was with Minsky at Vyroubova’s just before you left.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I could listen to him include anyone else, but that was too farfetched for me to accept.

Lupa’s eyes narrowed. “Is it? Have you asked yourself why it is that a simple governess seems to be a fixture at so many parties?”

I was surprised at the violence of my reaction—it was almost as though Lupa were attacking me personally. “Elena is far from a ‘simple governess,’ as you call her. She is a brilliant stage actress—young, single, and extremely beautiful. She would grace any party. And on top of that,” I continued, “perhaps you have forgotten, but she was in the Crimea with the Czar’s daughters when the first murder occurred.”

“That is true. You’re right.”

“Thank you,” I replied stiffly.

“But it is also true that you are smitten with her and it might affect your judgment.”

“I’ll be sure to guard against it!” I replied with some heat. “I am a married man, and I have been faithful to Tania.”

He held up a hand. “I never said you weren’t. Come, Jules, calm yourself. Elena has no discernible motive, but she did have opportunity in
Minsky’s case, and anyone, male or female, can plant a bomb or cut a man’s throat in his sleep. I only mention her for the same reason you included Pohl. Until we have some evidence, everyone is suspect. Everyone must be.”

Still angry, I retorted, “What about Alexandra? Why not suspect Rasputin while we’re at it? At some point the field must narrow. We can’t suspect an entire city.”