The Man From St. Petersburg Page 11

  Mrs. Mitchell interrupted: "Palace servants, they think they're better than the nobility--"

  "He says to me: 'Walden's gone, mate.' I thought, Gorblimey, I'm for it! I come running through the park, and halfway home I find the carriage, and my lady having hysterics, and my lord with blood on his sword!"

  Mrs. Mitchell said: "And after all that, nothing stolen."

  "A lewnatic," said Charles. "An ingenious lewnatic."

  There was general agreement.

  The cook poured the tea and served Charlotte first. "How is my lady now?" she said.

  "Oh, she's all right," Charlotte said. "She went to bed and took a dose of laudanum. She must be asleep by now."

  "And the gentlemen?"

  "Papa and Prince Orlov are in the drawing room, having a brandy."

  The cook sighed heavily. "Robbers in the park and suffragettes at the court--I don't know what we're coming to."

  "There'll be a socialist revolution," said Charles. "You mark my words."

  "We'll all be murdered in our beds," the cook said lugubriously.

  Charlotte said: "What did the suffragette mean about the King torturing women?" As she spoke she looked at Pritchard, who was sometimes willing to explain to her things she was not supposed to know about.

  "She was talking about force-feeding," Pritchard said. "Apparently it's painful."

  "Force-feeding?"

  "When they won't eat, they're fed by force."

  Charlotte was mystified. "How on earth is that done?"

  "Several ways," said Pritchard with a look that indicated he would not go into detail about all of them. "A tube through the nostrils is one."

  The under-house-parlormaid said: "I wonder what they feed them."

  Charles said: "Probably 'ot soup."

  "I can't believe this," Charlotte said. "Why should they refuse to eat?"

  "It's a protest," said Pritchard. "Makes difficulties for the prison authorities."

  "Prison?" Charlotte was astonished. "Why are they in prison?"

  "For breaking windows, making bombs, disturbing the peace . . ."

  "But what do they want?"

  There was a silence as the servants realized that Charlotte had no idea what a suffragette was.

  Finally Pritchard said: "They want votes for women."

  "Oh." Charlotte thought: Did I know that women couldn't vote? She was not sure. She had never thought about that sort of thing.

  "I think this discussion has gone quite far enough," said Mrs. Mitchell firmly. "You'll be in trouble, Mr. Pritchard, for putting wrong ideas into my lady's head."

  Charlotte knew that Pritchard never got in trouble, because he was practically Papa's friend. She said: "I wonder why they care so much about something like voting."

  There was a ring, and they all looked instinctively at the bell board.

  "Front door!" said Pritchard. "At this time of night!" He went out, pulling on his coat.

  Charlotte drank her tea. She felt tired. The suffragettes were puzzling and rather frightening, she decided; but all the same she wanted to know more.

  Pritchard came back. "Plate of sandwiches, please, Cook," he said. "Charles, take a fresh soda siphon to the drawing room." He began to arrange plates and napkins on a tray.

  "Well, come on," Charlotte said. "Who is it?"

  "A gentleman from Scotland Yard," said Pritchard.

  Basil Thomson was a bullet-headed man with light-colored receding hair, a heavy mustache and a penetrating gaze. Walden had heard of him. His father had been Archbishop of York. Thomson had been educated at Eton and Oxford and had done service in the Colonies as a Native Commissioner and as Prime Minister of Tonga. He had come home to qualify as a barrister and then had worked in the Prison Service, ending up as Governor of Dartmoor Prison with a reputation as a riot breaker. From prisons he had gravitated toward police work, and had become an expert on the mixed criminal-anarchist milieu of London's East End. This expertise had got him the top job in the Special Branch, the political police force.

  Walden sat him down and began to recount the evening's events. As he spoke he kept an eye on Aleks. The boy was superficially calm, but his face was pale, he sipped steadily at a glass of brandy-and-soda and his left hand clutched rhythmically at the arm of his chair.

  At one point Thomson interrupted Walden, saying: "Did you notice when the carriage picked you up that the footman was missing?"

  "Yes, I did," Walden said. "I asked the coachman where he was, but the coachman seemed not to hear. Then, because there was such a crush at the palace door, and my daughter was telling me to hurry up, I decided not to press the matter until we got home."

  "Our villain was relying on that, of course. He must have a cool nerve. Go on."

  "The carriage stopped suddenly in the park, and the door was thrown open by the man."

  "What did he look like?"

  "Tall. He had a scarf or something over his face. Dark hair. Staring eyes."

  "All criminals have staring eyes," Thomson said. "Earlier on, had the coachman got a better look at him?"

  "Not much. At that time the man wore a hat, and of course it was dark."

  "Hm. And then?"

  Walden took a deep breath. At the time he had been not so much frightened as angry, but now, when he looked back on it, he was full of fear for what might have happened to Aleks, or Lydia, or Charlotte. He said: "Lady Walden screamed, and that seemed to disconcert the fellow. Perhaps he had not expected to find any women in the coach. Anyway, he hesitated." And thank God he did, he thought. "I poked him with my sword, and he dropped the gun."

  "Did you do him much damage?"

  "I doubt it. I couldn't get a swing in that confined space, and of course the sword isn't particularly sharp. I bloodied him, though. I wish I had chopped off his damned head."

  The butler came in, and conversation stopped. Walden realized he had been talking rather loudly. He tried to calm himself. Pritchard served sandwiches and brandy-and-soda to the three men. Walden said: "You'd better stay up, Pritchard, but you can send everyone else to bed."

  "Very good, my lord."

  When he had gone Walden said: "It is possible that this was just a robbery. I have let the servants think that, and Lady Walden and Charlotte, too. However, a robber would hardly have needed such an elaborate plan, to my mind. I am perfectly certain that it was an attempt on Aleks's life."

  Thomson looked at Aleks. "I'm afraid I agree. Have you any idea how he knew where to find you?"

  Aleks crossed his legs. "My movements haven't been secret."

  "That must change. Tell me, sir, has your life ever been threatened?"

  "I live with threats," Aleks said tightly. "There has never been an attempt before."

  "Is there any reason why you in particular should be the target of Nihilists or revolutionists?"

  "For them, it is enough that I am a p-prince."

  Walden realized that the problems of the English establishment, with suffragettes and Liberals and trade unions, were trivial by comparison with what the Russians had to cope with, and he felt a surge of sympathy for Aleks.

  Aleks went on in a quiet, controlled voice. "However, I am known to be something of a reformer, by Russian standards. They could pick a more appropriate victim."

  "Even in London," Thomson agreed. "There's always a Russian aristocrat or two in London for the season."

  Walden said: "What are you getting at?"

  Thomson said: "I'm wondering whether the villain knew what Prince Orlov is doing here, and whether his motive for tonight's attack was to sabotage your talks."

  Walden was dubious. "How would the revolutionists have found that out?"

  "I'm just speculating," Thomson replied. "Would this be an effective way to sabotage your talks?"

  "Very effective indeed," Walden said. The thought made him go cold. "If the Czar were to be told that his nephew had been assassinated in London by a revolutionist--especially if it were an expatriate Russian revolutionist--h
e would go through the roof. You know, Thomson, how the Russians feel about our having their subversives here--our open-door policy has caused friction at the diplomatic level for years. Something like this could destroy Anglo-Russian relations for twenty years. There would be no question of an alliance then."

  Thomson nodded. "I was afraid of that. Well, there's no more we can do tonight. I'll set my department to work at dawn. We'll search the park for clues, and interview your servants, and I expect we'll round up a few anarchists in the East End."

  Aleks said: "Do you think you will catch the man?"

  Walden longed for Thomson to give a reassuring answer, but it was not forthcoming. "It won't be easy," Thomson said. "He's obviously a planner, so he'll have a bolt-hole somewhere. We've no proper description of him. Unless his wounds take him to hospital, our chances are slim."

  "He may try to kill me again," Aleks said.

  "So we must take evasive action. I propose you should move out of this house tomorrow. We'll take the top floor of one of the hotels for you, in a false name, and give you a bodyguard. Lord Walden will have to meet with you secretly, and you'll have to cut out social engagements, of course."

  "Of course."

  Thomson stood up. "It's very late. I'll set all this in motion."

  Walden rang for Pritchard. "You've got a carriage waiting, Thomson?"

  "Yes. Let us speak on the telephone tomorrow morning."

  Pritchard saw Thomson out, and Aleks went off to bed. Walden told Pritchard to lock up, then went upstairs.

  He was not sleepy. As he undressed he let himself relax and feel all the conflicting emotions that he had so far held at bay. He felt proud of himself, at first--after all, he thought, I drew a sword and fought off an assailant: not bad for a man of fifty with a gouty leg! Then he became depressed when he recalled how coolly they had all discussed the diplomatic consequences of the death of Aleks--bright, cheerful, shy, handsome, clever Aleks, whom Walden had seen grow into a man.

  He got into bed and lay awake, reliving the moment when the carriage door flew open and the man stood there with the gun; and now he was frightened, not for himself or Aleks, but for Lydia and Charlotte. The thought that they might have been killed made him tremble in his bed. He remembered holding Charlotte in his arms, eighteen years ago, when she had blond hair and no teeth; he remembered her learning to walk and forever falling on her bottom; he remembered giving her a pony of her own, and thinking that her joy when she saw it gave him the biggest thrill of his life; he remembered her just a few hours ago, walking into the royal presence with her head held high, a grown woman and a beautiful one. If she died, he thought, I don't know that I could bear it.

  And Lydia: if Lydia were dead I would be alone. The thought made him get up and go through to her room. There was a night-light beside her bed. She was in a deep sleep, lying on her back, her mouth a little open, her hair a blond skein across the pillow. She looked soft and vulnerable. I have never been able to make you understand how much I love you, he thought. Suddenly he needed to touch her, to feel that she was warm and alive. He got into bed with her and kissed her. Her lips responded but she did not wake up. Lydia, he thought, I could not live without you.

  Lydia had lain awake for a long time, thinking about the man with the gun. It had been a brutal shock, and she had screamed in sheer terror--but there was more to it than that. There had been something about the man, something about his stance, or his shape, or his clothes, that had seemed dreadfully sinister in an almost supernatural way, as if he were a ghost. She wished she could have seen his eyes.

  After a while she had taken another dose of laudanum, and then she slept. She dreamed that the man with the gun came to her room and got into bed with her. It was her own bed, but in the dream she was eighteen years old again. The man put his gun down on the white pillow beside her head. He still had the scarf around his face. She realized that she loved him. She kissed his lips through the scarf.

  He made love to her beautifully. She began to think that she might be dreaming. She wanted to see his face. She said Who are you? and a voice said Stephen. She knew this was not so, but the gun on the pillow had somehow turned into Stephen's sword, with blood on its point; and she began to have doubts. She clung to the man on top of her, afraid that the dream would end before she was satisfied. Then, dimly, she began to suspect that she was doing in reality what she was doing in the dream; yet the dream persisted. Strong physical pleasure possessed her. She began to lose control. Just as her climax began the man in the dream took the scarf from his face, and in that moment Lydia opened her eyes, and saw Stephen's face above her; and then she was overcome by ecstasy, and for the first time in nineteen years she cried for joy.

  FIVE

  Charlotte looked forward with mixed feelings to Belinda's coming-out ball. She had never been to a town ball, although she had been to lots of country balls, many of them at Walden Hall. She liked to dance and she knew she did it well, but she hated the cattle-market business of sitting out with the wallflowers and waiting for a boy to pick you out and ask you to dance. She wondered whether this might be handled in a more civilized way among the "Smart Set."

  They got to Uncle George and Aunt Clarissa's Mayfair house half an hour before midnight, which Mama said was the earliest time one could decently arrive at a London ball. A striped canopy and a red carpet led from the curb to the garden gate, which had somehow been transformed into a Roman triumphal arch.

  But even that did not prepare Charlotte for what she saw when she passed through the arch. The whole side garden had been turned into a Roman atrium. She gazed about her in wonderment. The lawns and the flower beds had been covered over with a hardwood dance floor stained in black and white squares to look like marble tiles. A colonnade of white pillars, linked with chains of laurel, bordered the floor. Beyond the pillars, in a kind of cloister, there were raised benches for the sitters-out. In the middle of the floor, a fountain in the form of a boy with a dolphin splashed in a marble basin, the streams of water lit by colored spotlights. On the balcony of an upstairs bedroom a band played ragtime. Garlands of smilax and roses decorated the walls, and baskets of begonias hung from the balcony. A huge canvas roof, painted sky blue, covered the whole area from the eaves of the house to the garden wall.

  "It's a miracle!" Charlotte said.

  Papa said to his brother: "Quite a crowd, George."

  "We invited eight hundred. What the devil happened to you in the park?"

  "Oh, it wasn't as bad as it sounded," Papa said with a forced smile. He took George by the arm, and they moved to one side to talk.

  Charlotte studied the guests. All the men wore full evening dress--white tie, white waistcoat and tails. It particularly suited the young men, or at least the slim men, Charlotte thought: it made them look quite dashing as they danced. Observing the dresses, she decided that hers and her mother's, though rather tasteful, were a trifle old-fashioned, with their wasp waists and ruffles and sweepers: Aunt Clarissa wore a long, straight, slender gown with a skirt almost too tight to dance in, and Belinda had harem pants.

  Charlotte realized she knew nobody. Who will dance with me, she wondered, after Papa and Uncle George? However, Aunt Clarissa's younger brother, Jonathan, waltzed with her, then introduced her to three men who were at Oxford with him, each of whom danced with her. She found their conversation monotonous: they said the floor was good, and the band--Gottlieb's--was good; then they ran out of steam. Charlotte tried: "Do you believe that women should have the vote?" The replies she got were: "Certainly not," "No opinion," and "You're not one of them, are you?"

  The last of her partners, whose name was Freddie, took her into the house for supper. He was a rather sleek young man, with regular features--handsome, I suppose, Charlotte thought--and fair hair. He was at the end of his first year at Oxford. Oxford was rather jolly, he said, but he confessed he was not much of a one for reading books, and he rather thought he would not go back in October.

  The i
nside of the house was festooned with flowers and bright with electric light. For supper there were hot and cold soup, lobster, quail, strawberries, ice cream and hothouse peaches. "Always the same old food for supper," Freddie said. "They all use the same caterer."

  "Do you go to a lot of balls?" Charlotte asked.

  " 'Fraid so. All the time, really, in the season."

  Charlotte drank a glass of champagne-cup in the hope that it would make her feel more gay; then she left Freddie and wandered through a series of reception rooms. In one of them several games of bridge were under way. Two elderly duchesses held court in another. In a third, older men played billiards while younger men smoked. Charlotte found Belinda there with a cigarette in her hand. Charlotte had never seen the point of tobacco, unless one wanted to look sophisticated. Belinda certainly looked sophisticated.

  "I adore your dress," Belinda said.

  "No, you don't. But you look sensational. How did you persuade your stepmother to let you dress like that?"

  "She'd like to wear one herself!"

  "She seems so much younger than my mama. Which she is, of course."

  "And being a stepmother makes a difference. Whatever happened to you after the court?"

  "Oh, it was extraordinary! A madman pointed a gun at us!"

  "Your mama was telling me. Weren't you simply terrified?"

  "I was too busy calming Mama. Afterward I was scared to death. Why did you say, at the palace, that you wanted to have a long talk with me?"

  "Ah! Listen." She took Charlotte aside, away from the young men. "I've discovered how they come out."

  "What?"

  "Babies."

  "Oh!" Charlotte was all ears. "Do tell."

  Belinda lowered her voice. "They come out between your legs, where you make water."

  "It's too small!"

  "It stretches."

  How awful, Charlotte thought.

  "But that's not all," Belinda said. "I've found out how they start."

  "How?"

  Belinda took Charlotte's elbow and they walked to the far side of the room. They stood in front of a mirror garlanded with roses. Belinda's voice fell almost to a whisper. "When you get married, you know you have to go to bed with your husband."