Authors: Barbara Cleverly
And, anyway, if a drunken scene were to develop, it would be the fault of that fair-haired man with the big shoulders. Honeysett had marked him down as one of the hush-hush brigade but perhaps he’d read it wrong. Joining in the spirit of the evening, the fellow had reached over and grabbed a bottle himself, strolled round the table and poured out at least two – Honeysett had been distracted and might have missed one – glasses for the foreign blighter. It was no business of the steward’s but he couldn’t shake off a feeling of foreboding. Something was brewing.
He decided to keep a wary eye on the bloke in black. He didn’t like the cut of his jib. He had to remind himself that this class of Russkie was no threat. They were all related to the English aristocracy up at that level. Most of them claimed Queen Victoria for a grandmother. He’d had all this laid out for him by Anna who seemed to know her aristos; he suspected that she was one of them, or had been in a previous life. It was the other bunch, the Reds – the Bolsheviks – you had to watch out for. Murdering scum, according to Anna.
At least now the policeman, the young fellow with the autocratic way with him, had joined the table, and the steward-in-chief felt he could come off watch.
There were undercurrents here tonight. All Honeysett could do was his own job. Thoroughly. ‘Just go about your business in your usual manner,’ they’d warned him at the briefing. ‘Ignore anything that does not concern the provision of hospitality.’ Honeysett had no problems with that. He liked a clear mandate. There’d be no cause to lay blame at
his
door if anything went wrong.
‘Antonio!’ He called the Italian to his side. ‘HRH. Check his plate. Top him up if you can. Makes sense to get some food into him to mop up all that wine he’s putting away.’
‘I just have, sir. He’s enjoying his meal and I’ve helped him to some more shellfish. He’s looking forward to the pavlova when his guest gets back to join him for dessert. He sent his compliments to the chef, by the way. I think he really meant it, sir. Oh, will you excuse me, sir? Anna’s signalling.’
Honeysett beamed. Away from the royal table, this mad party was going rather well. The sound of merry, excited voices was rising to exactly the pitch he liked to achieve. Yes, there’d be a good write-up in tomorrow’s society pages. He looked around for the photographer, tracking him by the flash of popping bulbs. Catching Cyril’s eye, he indicated that there was a scene worthy of his lens at the prince’s table. The sinister foreigner had slipped Honeysett a large note at the start of the proceedings with a hint as to how he was to earn it. Now seemed to be the right time. The Russkie had insinuated himself into the place the girl in green had vacated next to the prince and the two men were, as far as Honeysett’s untrained ears could make out, practising toasts in some outlandish tongue. Getting quite merry, the pair of them. And the blond bloke was still ladling it out. Well, the foreigner was showing some determination to have his photograph taken with HRH. Ten quids’ worth of determination. Time for the pay-off. No harm in that, surely?
Honeysett had an understanding with the gentlemen of the press. They did each other favours and made no comment. Only one of the hounds here tonight, but one was all that was needed. Luckily, it seemed the chosen one was Tate of the
Pictorial
. As smooth as they came.
Suddenly Antonio was at his elbow distracting him, whispering in his ear. Honeysett at once accompanied the server back into the kitchens, disturbed by his news. At least the girl had done the sensible thing and come straight off duty, secreting herself out of view in the staffroom. When they found her, sitting on a bench concealed under the rows of coats, Honeysett was alarmed by her pallor and the way she was clutching her stomach. She was leaning over, yelping and panting, seemingly having difficulty in breathing.
Honeysett silenced her attempts to stammer out apologies. In dread, he asked her: ‘Something you’ve eaten, Anna? Have you been tasting any of the dishes out there?’
Emphatically she shook her head. ‘No! Only that red caviar you told me to check on before we served it. It was still fine – honest, Mr H. Haven’t touched anything else. It’s nothing serious. It’s just the time of the month.’
‘Month? Month? What are you on about? What have
you
got against September? I’m getting a bit fed up with this.’
Catching his blank expression, Anna explained further: ‘No, not that. Women’s problems, Mr H. Bit early, though … must be all the excitement …’ She bent double again and began to retch.
‘Gets my sister the same way,’ Antonio supplied. ‘Sick as a cow, regular as clockwork.’
‘Antonio, get back out there and fill the gap. Pull Alec forward.’
‘Sir, I already have, sir.’
Honeysett acted swiftly. ‘Home, Anna. At once. Here’s half a crown for a taxi. Come back when you’re feeling better.’
He sighed as he helped her into her coat and off the premises. Female staff! They came cheaper than men but they had their drawbacks. Honeysett shuddered. Really, there was no place for them working in public view. Better kept behind the scenes. How was a bloke expected to allow for times of the month? Get them to fill in a calendar? Bloody women! More temperamental than the bloody oysters!
Cyril had responded at once to Honeysett’s lifted finger. He approached quietly and took his shot without warning before the party at the table was aware of what he was about to do and could begin to strike a fish-eyed pose. He liked to produce a natural effect. He exchanged a glare with Sandilands, who had ruined the photograph by turning away at the last moment.
Something was very wrong.
Cyril went to stand some yards away and stare. He fiddled with his camera, pretending to line up angles to disguise his surveillance of the group.
Lily had vanished, and sitting in her place was a nightmarish figure he thought he ought to know. A Danish name came to mind. Or was it Swedish? No – wasn’t the man a Balkan of some kind? Serbian? Romanian? Cyril vaguely recollected that there was some scandal associated with the name … if only he could remember it.
As he watched, the dark and the fair princely heads bent towards each other in perfect amity. Cyril’s alarm increased. Then the stranger looked up. Registering the newsman’s attention, he turned his face away from Edward to reveal the scar on his left cheek. He smiled for the camera. Cyril pressed the shutter in automatic reaction to the offered pose, nodded an acknowledgement and scrambled to gather up his equipment.
He dashed off into the fray to find Princess Ratziatinsky.
‘His prey, Zinia – what do you mean? Tell me! Quickly! Is he planning to shoot him?’ Lily’s fingers itched to take the girl by the shoulders and shake her.
The Russian gave a bitter laugh. ‘Heavens no! What would he do for a gun? The men were all searched, you know. But it’s a shot he’s interested in.’ She sniggered at the irony. ‘He’s ambitious. He’s attempting to insinuate himself into English society. He wants to appear in photographs in the fashionable journals sitting alongside the prince – his bosom companion to all appearances. He’s been planning this coup for some time. Marrying me was part of his grand plan. I … in my homeland … was connected with the imperial family. I enjoyed the consequence that went with that status. Many doors are still open to me, even here in London, on account of my family name. But when the revolution burst over our heads, like thousands more I had to flee with my parents or face at best imprisonment, at worst execution. Unlike the poor Tsar and his family, I found shelter in this country.
They
were not so fortunate,’ she added bitterly. ‘But tonight, with so many of my compatriots surrounding me, people who knew me in another life, I could not dissemble. I refused to lend him countenance. I came and hid myself away down here. Though that wasn’t my only reason.’
She twirled round again for Lily, hands extended in a parody of a mannequin’s pose. ‘Just look at me. What do you see?’
Lily could not tell her the sad truth. The girl resembled nothing so much as a sofa doll, one of those slim, silken puppets with huge glass eyes and painted faces whose floppy limbs her mother liked to drape along the couches to startle the unwary visitor. Half alive and wholly sinister.
But Zinia wasn’t interested in hearing a response from Lily. ‘The princess could hardly believe her eyes when I arrived looking like this.’ Her voice took on a tone that managed to be both imperious and petulant. ‘Wearing a five-year-old rag cobbled up at the hem. And a single strand of mediocre pearls. She didn’t know where to look. I couldn’t bear the disgrace. What you see me in now is all I have left. I’ve sold off and pawned everything of value I had. Since I married the scoundrel six months ago he’s got through all I own. He found my last precious gem, a diamond brooch that I had from my mother, and donated it …
donated
it! … to Princess Ratziatinsky for her auction tonight. His way of buying access to English royalty.’
‘You married him. And yet you can never have loved such a man.’
‘In my world one does not marry for love,’ Zinia announced. ‘My parents died of the influenza soon after we came here. I was alone for months in a foreign country, my wealth eroded, living like a mouse. Someone introduced him to me. He offered to marry me and remake my fortune. Oh, he told me exactly who and what he was before I accepted him. He confessed his roguery with disarming honesty, he promised to involve me in an adventure. “Bury the past,” he told me, “it saps the strength. The future is for those who have the wits and the energy to make it theirs.” And it seemed an entertaining future. Too late I discovered the chapters in his life he had omitted. The violence, the perversion. The murder.’
Unmoved by the dramatic delivery, the tears, the flashing eyes, Lily came straight to the point. ‘If he isn’t Prince Gustavus, then who is he?’ She was sure Sandilands would expect her to establish an identity.
‘Oh, when he says he’s the son of a Serbian prince, he’s telling nothing less than the truth,’ said Zinia, annoyingly Sphinx-like. ‘In fact he’s the spitting image of Gustavus Alexis, they tell me. But he’s his illegitimate son. One of many. His mother was a serving maid or something of the kind.’ Zinia shrugged a shoulder. ‘He was brought up alongside his half-brother, the legitimate heir, in a ramshackle castle in a remote corner of a continent about to burst into flames … as his brother’s valet.’
‘Good Lord! What a very medieval way of going on.’
‘On the death of their father, and the ruin of the estate in the war, they harnessed up the one remaining carriage and set off, master and man, to try their luck in Paris.’
‘Don’t tell me. Only one of them survived the journey?’ Lily was eager to cut short a predictable and most probably deceitful story. She was quite certain she’d read something of the kind in a book by Alexandre Dumas. Zinia’s wild pronouncements were beginning to irritate her and annoyance sharpened her tongue. ‘Another tawdry tale in the annals of Mendacia, my granny would say.’
Zinia was not affronted. She replied to Lily’s jibe with a look of knowing superiority. ‘Oh, it does happen. Someone has popped up recently in Germany claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. The remaining members of the imperial family have been assembled to pass her in review and establish or demolish the young woman’s claims.’
‘I had heard. Varying opinions given, I believe.’
Zinia’s lip curled. ‘I can tell you the outcome of
that
claim. Whatever the truth of it, the woman will be rejected and Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova will be buried a second time.’
‘Why so certain?’
‘The last thing Europe wants to see is an heir to the Tsar’s fortune making an appearance. It has been removed, apportioned and secreted away. And – dare one say it? – even spent. The Tsar was far sighted enough to take out insurance with European banks against his premature death in favour of his children. An enormous amount. No one wants to pay out such sums to a doubtful claimant – or a genuine one! Besides, the young Anastasia was a fiend. Better not resurrected. No, the present custodians of the fortune are not going to surrender it, however compelling the case. The world has outgrown the Romanovs. There is no place for them. If the Tsar himself were to rise from the dead, he’d have to take his chances at the roulette table like the rest of us. Like Gustavus.’
‘Murder and impersonation? The behaviour you’re describing does not go unpunished in England. This is a civilized country. I have a friend …’ Lily said hesitantly, ‘a friend of some influence who might be able to help you if you were to lodge a complaint with him.’
‘An influential friend?’ the Russian said, eyes narrow with suspicion. ‘You have avoided answering my question. Who
are
you? Who are you to intrude on my unhappiness, offering to pin up my hem and repair my life?’
‘An emissary. Lily Wentworth. I’m the guest of the Prince of Wales this evening. We were rather expecting you to join our table. If you come up now, you’ll be in time for the last of the caviar. And we’re promised a peach pavlova for dessert.’
But her positive tone couldn’t penetrate the gloom in which the Russian had cocooned herself. She shook her head, determined to hold fast to her despair. Lily took her by the hand.