Rasputin's Revenge (7 page)

The inspector spoke. “I don’t even grant that. But other than that, what is there?”

“There is the fact that he is lying in bed, neatly covered by his bedsheet, but with his boots still on. Anyone who is so drunk that he falls into bed with his boots on does not first turn down the bedsheet and crawl under. Further, as you well know, someone called his guards to escort him from the party at Vyroubova’s. When they arrived, he’d already gone, and was in bed when they got here.”

“That’s circumstantial.”

“And how did someone so drunk find his way home alone?”

“He may have simply gotten impatient.”

Lupa shook his head. “A man who, you contend, had drunk so much that he would shortly die from it? No, Inspector, you can’t have it both ways. He was either sober enough to walk home alone, in which case he wouldn’t have died from the drinking, or he was brought here, already in a stupor, by his murderer.”

Lupa turned from the dead man on the bed and was looking directly at me. His face broke into what was, for him, a broad smile—his mouth lifted perhaps a centimeter. “Ah, Jules,” he said, “satisfactory.”

This greeting totally mystified me, but I didn’t have time to reflect on it since he immediately went back to the topic. “Would you like more?”

“
Da.
You would expect a white crust around his mouth, would you not? That is a symptom of arsenic poisoning, not alcohol.”

“Pah!” Lupa exclaimed, including me in his response. “Everyone who’s read
Madame Bovary
thinks he’s an expert on arsenic. It is child’s play to wipe off the residue.” He faced the old man. “No, Monsieur Dubniev, it is irrefutably arsenic poisoning. Come here, closer.”

Dubniev approached the bedside. Lupa, rather forcefully I thought, pushed the man’s face over Minsky’s. “Now inhale,” he said. As the inspector did so, Lupa pressed on Minsky’s chest, forcing out the tidal air.

“What do you smell?” Lupa asked.

Dubniev straightened up, his face twisted in revulsion. “Garlic,” he said.

Lupa’s lips curled again in his peculiar smile. “Exactly, sir. Garlic.”

The old man looked confused. “Is that a telling point? I’m afraid I miss its significance.”

Lupa put an arm against one of the bedposts and leaned against it. “The smell of garlic is indicative of arsenic poisoning.”

The inspector laughed. “It’s also indicative of a taste for escargots.”

“True,” Lupa admitted, “and in another country at another time, the smell of garlic on a corpse’s breath might mean nothing. But here in Russia, in the Fall, after three years of war”—he ticked off the points with his fingers—“there is no garlic.”

“How can you be …?”

“I spent last night cooking in the Czar’s kitchen. Believe me, sir, there is no garlic. None, not a clove. I would not have missed it.”

“That doesn’t prove …”

“Excuse me, but of course it does. If the Czar’s kitchen doesn’t have a spice, you may rest assured it is not available in all of Russia.”

Dubniev looked down, defeated by Lupa’s knowledge. “I will order the autopsy,” he said, sullenly, and I sensed that my friend had made an enemy.

But he was not excessively jubilant at his victory. “It doesn’t matter. Someone killed him—the autopsy will merely confirm it.” He turned to me. “Jules, it’s good to see you. How was the Baltic?”

The question seemed plausible only because I was used to Lupa’s deductive ability, though I don’t understand how he could have known I
made the trip by the northern route rather than the more common one through the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, then up by train from the Crimea.

Dubniev bowed rather stiffly and asked Lupa if there was anything more to be done before he returned to his headquarters.

After a moment’s hesitation, Lupa nodded. “Have some breakfast, Monsieur. It will put things in a better perspective.”

I knew Lupa well enough to know that he wasn’t being flip, but the response seemed to strike Dubniev badly. Without a further word, he turned and marched from the room.

“That was …” I began.

Lupa shrugged. “It’s understandable. The man is completely beyond his depth. He is, in fact, near panic, and of all times, now he should be rested and well-fed. Instead, he stays up pondering, forgets to eat …” He sighed. “It’s no wonder he feels threatened, but he should realize that I’m here to help him, not take his job.”

“You’re working here then?” I asked.

Lupa nodded. “I have only just begun.” He cast a fleeting glance back at the body on the bed. “It is a bad business. But come,” he said, “there’s nothing more to be done in this room. How about you? Have you eaten? There’s a kiosk down by …”

… his third cup of tea and the last of his sixth or seventh piroshki.

He leaned back against the wall of the train station, arms crossed in front of him, his eyes nearly closed. I was being closely scrutinized, and decided I would take the opportunity to turn the tables on my friend. Fifteen months before, when I’d first met Lupa, he had carried himself with an air of youthful enthusiasm. Now, though he was still a young man of perhaps twenty-seven or -eight, his experiences as an agent behind the invisible front of this terrible war had obviously aged him.

There is a gravity now recognizable in him, underscored by the physical weight he’s added to his frame. His face is at once ruddier, more healthy, and wearier, more strained. The paradox lends the whole a great deal of character that was not as obvious before. He still combs his dark brown hair straight back, emphasizing the strong high forehead, the heavy brows.

“Your life has agreed with you, then,” he said at last. “With Tania. And you’ve had a child?”

I nodded, smiling. “A girl, Michelle.”

“Ah, congratulations. You’re doing your own cooking?”

“It was impossible to replace Fritz,” I said. “I didn’t even try.”

“Yes,” Lupa agreed. “He is brilliant. We’ve stayed in touch.”

“So have we.”

Lupa’s eyes gleamed with humor, and I suddenly realized why. Accustomed as I was to his displays of deductive virtuousity, I could think of nothing in my dress or bearing that might have given away the fact that I’d had a child and did most of my own cooking. Obviously, Fritz had filled him in on those details, and he was enjoying his charade that he had deduced them. Noting my look of understanding, Lupa nodded, his lips curling a fraction of an inch in a smile.

“It’s very good to see you,” he said.

I uttered some similar sentiment, but was curious about his presence in the capital. If he was investigating Minsky’s murder, he might be involved with the other Palace slayings, and if that were the case, it could affect my own mission.

In answer to my questions, he was, I thought, surprisingly forthcoming. “Just so, Jules. These killings are having their effect on the Czar. Minsky’s death might push him over the edge, though I pray not.”

“Over the edge to what?”

He shrugged. “Abdication or a premature suit for peace.”

“Do you think he might actually abdicate?”

The train’s whistle blew. It would be leaving shortly for the short run into St. Petersburg. Lupa accompanied me as I walked to the platform. “He is in a precarious state. He might do anything.”

“And have you made any progress?” I asked. “Does there seem to be any connection between the murders?”

“That’s what I hope to find out. And you …” He paused, then continued in a different vein. “Well, there have been four murders now. The first, Dieter Bresloe, was the Czar’s confidant and bodyguard. He was blown to pieces in his room. Next was Sergei Lubovitch, a member of the Imperial Guard and the Czar’s chess partner. His throat was cut. The last before Minsky was Duke Pavlaya Beretska, Nicholas’ second cousin and Lord of the Hunt. Nicholas loves to hunt.”

“How was he killed?”

Lupa looked disgusted. “Another grenade, this one at the Winter Palace after he’d been to visit the royal children.”

The train whistle blew again; the wheels began to turn. I stepped aboard. “So they were all close to the Czar?”

Lupa walked alongside as the train gathered speed. “That’s all,” he said. “It’s not much.”

I started to say something as the train let out another tremendous shriek. The words were lost. Lupa raised a hand in farewell. While I
watched, he turned and went back into the station, lost in thought, head down.

Rasputin’s flat at 20, 63–64 Gorokhavaya Street was a short walk from the train station, just opposite police headquarters. Last night, the monk had instructed me to take the back way up from the internal courtyard to his apartment, and when I got to the landing three flights up, I understood why. A line of visitors already had formed behind a velvet rope that was tied across the hallway.

A man stood at the door, controlling who went in or out. When I told him who I was, he consulted a list on which appeared to be scribbled names and appointment times, and then ushered me in and closed the door behind me.

I felt somewhat at a loss since the flat appeared to be empty. It was still long before noon, and I thought perhaps, after staying late at Vyroubova’s, the starets wasn’t yet awake.

Walking through the antechamber, I became aware of some presence but I can’t really say how I noticed it. Did I smell something, sense movement? Was there some almost unheard sound that registered?

To my left was a large bare chamber with chairs arranged around the walls and a samovar in one corner. Religious icons were the only decoration. On my right was a dining room with a table on which sat a bowl of fresh fruit and several vases of flowers. The furniture was of that same style, or lack of it, that characterized the Mauve Room and Vyroubova’s house.

Now I heard a definite sound through the door beyond the dining room. Pushing it open, I realized I had intruded into Rasputin’s bedroom, and I would have backed out at once had what I saw not arrested me.

Rasputin, completely naked, stood facing away from me. His back was already covered with red welts, and as I watched he continued to flog himself, slowly and regularly, with some sort of weighted leather thong.

Of course, flagellation is an important part of some religious sects, but I’d never seen it practiced before and it horrified me. Reflexively, I backed away a step, knocking into the door. At the noise, Rasputin stopped abruptly and turned to face me.

Just as he did so, however, there was another noise from still another door off his bedroom. That door opened, and a woman stepped out of what must have been a bath or dressing room. Her hair was in disarray and her skin blotched, but otherwise she was dressed like a noblewoman.

In my career I have been in many types of situations, but never before had I been in a room with a woman and a naked man. Acutely embarrassed, I made to leave, but Rasputin stopped me.

“No!” He turned to the woman. “You! My cassock, then go.”

Obediently, the woman grabbed his robe and handed it to him. Then, without a word, she brushed quickly past me and was gone, closing the door behind her.

When I turned back, Rasputin had donned the cassock and was smiling at me. “Sin is the first step to holiness,” he said, without a trace of apology. “To Alyosha, yes? Tea? Here or there?”

I am getting used to his staccato way of talking. I was beginning to feel the man might be mad, though subsequent events today make me hesitate to try to label him. He has some power—that is certain. I must reserve my judgment. I sense that he would be the worst possible enemy to have at court.

He didn’t really seem to care about whether I wanted to go directly to the Winter Palace. He, it seemed, was going to have tea. We went together into the bare room I’d seen earlier, and he poured two cups from the samovar. He drank like a Russian peasant, through a lump of sugar held in his front teeth.

The moment of relative silence gave me time to collect my thoughts and somewhat recover my sangfroid. Though he had handled my unexpected arrival in his room with great presence of mind, I thought it would be instructive to see his reaction to other events.

“Have you heard?” I said as casually as I could between sips of tea, “Commissar Minsky is dead.”

At first, he made no response to my statement. He took another sip of his tea, then looked at me as if wondering when I had arrived and what I was doing there. Gradually, those frightening eyes widened, then narrowed, and he slowly took the lump of sugar from his mouth and placed it in his saucer. “What did you say?

“They think it was murder.”

“Murder,” he repeated, as though it were a word he’d never heard before. He stood up, then walked to the window and stared down into the back courtyard. “This will be hard for the little father.”

“The little father?” I noticed the change in his voice pattern. He was speaking in sentences, not phrases.

“Nicholas,” he said abstractedly, “the Czar.”

“Forgive me,” I said, “but I got the impression last night that you and Minsky were enemies of some sort. At the least, that you had grave differences.”

He turned back from the window, his eyes blazing. He was clearly sensitive to even the mildest of criticism.

“Minsky was a friend to Nicholas, and the little father needs his friends.” Then, as though remembering that he was out of character, he went back to his babbling. “His burden. The War. Killings. Blood everywhere. No one will survive it.”

“Be that as it may, you argued.”

He stood up straight, pounded on his chest with one hand. “We are Russians! We drink, we fight, then we forget. Minsky was a patriot, a true Russian. He loved the Czar!”

“But he didn’t love you.”

“I? Who am I? A simple peasant. I don’t matter.”

Oddly, I felt that he truly believed what he was saying. My feelings about the monk were shifting as quickly as his moods. One moment he appeared nearly insane, raving and making pronouncements, and the next he was in fact a simple peasant, somewhat awed by the position in which he found himself, and naturally possessive of it, but withal an honest and concerned Russian with a deep commitment to the Czar and Czarina.

It is good to remember here that love of the Czar is the definition of loyalty Truer here and now even than it was when Louis XIV uttered his famous “
L’état, c’est moi
,” Nicholas is the state.