To Kill a Tsar

‘But where does one draw the line?’ Hadfield had spoken to the superintendent of public scandal, of a friend on the St Petersburg Gazette who was pursuing a story on the treatment of casualties in the recent war. He had mentioned a confidential visit his uncle was hoping to make to the hospital with other members of the government. And he had told the bucolic old superintendent that the general had told him a prominent member of the royal family had expressed his concern.

‘I even mentioned the foreign press and my friend on The Times.’

‘You snake,’ said Dobson with a short barking laugh. He took a cigarette from a silver box on his desk, lit it then flopped into the armchair opposite Hadfield. ‘And what is going to happen to Department 10?’

The superintendent had promised beds and nursing care, that he would gradually transfer the men to the body of the hospital and contact their families. ‘And those who do not recover will be moved to an asylum — although I suppose that will be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.’

‘But you’ve done what you can,’ Dobson replied, leaning forward with the wine bottle to fill Hadfield’s glass. ‘And risked a good deal to do so.’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, what about good relations with General Glen? It would be unwise to rub him up the wrong way. You will forgive me for saying so, I hope, but your uncle is not a man to cross.’

It was rumoured the general was pursuing newspapers that had the temerity to criticise his stewardship of the empire’s finances and that the censor was on the point of stepping in to suppress further adverse comment. ‘At least the general has helped you do a good turn, even if he is threatening to put the rest of us out of our jobs,’ he said with a cheerful twinkle.

It was entirely typical of Dobson to find humour and the kernel of something positive in even the grimmest of situations. In a relatively short time, he and Hadfield had become friends. They were much the same age, Englishmen who considered Russia to be home, they shared a passion for the language and a fascination with the people and their customs. Dobson had taught himself Russian, then persuaded The Times to accredit him as a war correspondent, and had reported with distinction on the recent conflict with Turkey. His father owned a small cotton mill in one of the new manufacturing towns in the Midlands. Less fortunate in his education than Hadfield, he had more than made up for his shortcomings by becoming a ruthless autodidact. He was a little on the plump side, but his flabby good-humoured face and high forehead leant him a certain ageless quality. One of the second secretaries at the embassy had likened him cruelly to Mr Pickwick. But anyone who took Dobson for a gull was a poor judge of character. He was not only resourceful but determined, with a reputation at the embassy for clinging to a story like a ferret to a rabbit. In politics, he was a new town liberal, in favour of universal suffrage for men but not for women, an admirer of Mr Gladstone and a passionate supporter of a free press. In his column for The Times, he was a discreet critic of Russia’s despotic government but had no time for ‘nihilists’ or ‘socialist revolutionaries’. As they sat in the correspondent’s comfortable study, surrounded by piles of Russian newspapers, books and maps, and his prints of Petersburg, Hadfield wondered what his friend would say if he knew the sort of people he had been consorting with at the clinic. A little heady after two glasses of wine on an empty stomach, he was almost tempted to confide in him, but Dobson would speak sharply to him of the risk he was running, would advise having nothing further to do with Anna and the Figners and might even suggest reporting Goldenberg to the police: in the end he chose to keep his counsel.

‘Let me ask you again, Dobson, where does one draw the line beyond which the means cannot be justified by the ends?’

Easing his heavy frame from the chair, the correspondent reached across the desk for another cigarette, lit it and inhaled a long thoughtful stream of smoke: ‘Are you suggesting one is obliged to draw a different line in Russia?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Of course one has to be guided by conscience…’ Dobson paused to flick a little ash from his cigarette, ‘but perhaps we can be forgiven for taking a few more liberties with the truth in this country. It would be quite impossible to change anything for the better otherwise.’

When Hadfield visited Department 10 the following day, things had already changed markedly for the better. Most of the men had been moved to other wards, but those that remained were in beds, the floors were clean, the rooms well lit and workmen were fitting glass to the windows. Warder Ryabovsky had been replaced by two large and efficient-looking middle-aged women in blue uniforms who were dispensing Hadfield’s prescription of potassium bromide and morphine to the patients. Some of the men were sitting on benches in the sunshine, watching a work gang cutting back the brambles and burdock in the garden. The story of the ‘English doctor’s’ triumph was already known throughout the hospital and military doctors he had never met stopped him in the corridors to offer their congratulations. He took particular care to ensure a favourable report reached his uncle by visiting his aunt and cousin during the day when the general was at his ministry. ‘But he will want to hear all about it,’ his aunt said, holding his hand between hers. ‘How on earth did you manage to persuade the hospital?’ In reply, Hadfield was fulsome in his praise for the superintendent — ‘a most reasonable and caring man’.

His aunt pressed him to join the family for a carriage ride into the countryside on the Sunday, but he made his excuses. Although he had resolved more than once not to go to the clinic, he went to some lengths to be sure he had no other commitments. He was still debating the wisdom of his promise to Anna in the droshky that afternoon as it rattled and swayed across the Nikolaevsky Bridge, and even while he stood in the fine summer rain before St Boris and St Gleb, waiting for his guide. The boy with red hair who had met him on his first visit was his silent companion again. After twenty minutes weaving through the streets of the district, they reached the clinic at last to find a crowd gathered about the entrance. His guide drew him by the sleeve round the throng to where Anna was standing a little apart. She glanced up at him as he approached, then away without a word, the intense frown that never left her for long troubling her brow. A frosty sort of welcome, Hadfield thought, and particularly galling after a week in which she had often been in his thoughts. He stared at her for a moment, hoping she would register the frustration in his face, but her attention was fixed on the circle of men. Turning to follow her gaze, he caught a glimpse of what he took to be a man kneeling, crumpled forward at their feet, and he pushed forward, parting the shoulders of the men in front of him: ‘I’m a doctor.’ The circle began to close, heads straining to see what the gentleman was doing. A woman was shouting at them to step back and as he sank beside the slumped figure he was conscious of Anna standing above him.

‘Can you hear me?’ he asked, and he shook the man gently. But it took only a few seconds for Hadfield to realise he was never going to hear anything in this world again. By a quirk of fate the man had collapsed to his knees as if in prayer. Too late for that, Hadfield thought, lifting his head to look into his lifeless brown eyes. Early forties, grizzled beard, florid face, his mouth a little open, revealing black and broken teeth, a dribble of blood at the corner. A broad man reduced in death to a malodorous ball.

‘No one wants to touch him,’ said Anna in a low voice.

Hadfield looked up to find her bending close. ‘Do you know who he is?’

‘They say he’s a drunk, a vagrant,’ she said hesitantly. ‘He’s been seen loitering in the district, sleeping rough.’

‘Well, why on earth doesn’t someone move him or call the police?’ He realised at once that this was a foolish question to ask.

‘It’s bad luck.’

There was a murmur of assent from those close by.

‘For God’s sake! Do you believe that?’

‘Of course not,’ said Anna. The colour rising in her neck and cheeks suggested this was a half truth.

‘We can’t leave him here for people to step over. You and you,’ said Hadfield, pointing at two men in the crowd, ‘help me, will you?’

It took an hour of bullying and coaxing in equal measure before they were able to persuade willing souls to help them move the body into the school. And in that hour a waiting room packed with the sick and anxious began to empty.

‘It’s him,’ said Anna when they were alone, and she nodded at the corpse on the table before them. ‘It’s bad luck to be in the same building.’

‘Superstitious nonsense. I’m going to look at him. He wasn’t struck down by a devil.’