Treasure in Roubles, page 1
David Williams
TREASURE BY
ROUBLES
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Edward & Elizabeth Parrack
and George Lockhart
Chapter One
One Molly Treasure’s gaze moved from the smoked trout on her plate and turned to wide-eyed, earnest contemplation of the wintry scene beyond the kitchen window. She took a slow deep breath through the aquiline nose: the nostrils flared: the chin lifted on the slim neck: the eyebrows arched, wrinkling the noted brow.
‘It’s just that I feel responsible. For their going to Russia at all. All thirteen of them,’ she said in a tone redolent with concern.
‘Headed for the salt mines, are they?’ enquired Mark Treasure lightly, and looking about the table top. ‘Is there more horseradish?’
The Executive Vice-Chairman of Grenwood, Phipps, the merchant bankers, and his celebrated actress wife were sitting opposite each other, taking a light Saturday luncheon alone at their house near the Thames in London’s Cheyne Walk. Molly had a matinee to play at two-thirty. Snow, five inches of which cloaked the patio and the garden beyond, had ruled out Treasure’s golf—as it had over all three preceding January weekends.
‘You know, you should have gone skiing.’ For the moment the ominously numbered Russian excursionists had been abandoned to their plight. Molly turned her glance inwards as she spoke, then paused as she remembered the last question. The touch of irritation showed briefly on her face as she reached for the labelled bottle in the cupboard behind her. She had put plenty of horseradish sauce on his plate when she had prepared the meal.
The table in the window of the kitchen snug was hardly big enough for serious eating: the two used it only for breakfast and snacks. This gave Molly the excuse not to let the surface become cluttered with garish branded packages, especially garish branded packages of commodities her conscience suggested she could have made herself—or at least troubled to turn out into more seemly containers. She watched her husband apply a large dollop of the sauce to his plate.
‘Good horseradish, this.’ He studied the label. ‘Almost as good as you make.’
They’d been eating no other kind for years: another good reason to present it in decorous disguise. Molly made an uncommitting noise, firmly re-appropriated the pot, and put it out of sight again. ‘Is it too late? For you to arrange skiing?’
‘In March perhaps. But I’m not going without you. You really can’t get that contract altered?’
She shook her head. ‘Big part. Tight budget. Filming has to start in April. It really would be too awful to break a leg or anything before. Anyway they couldn’t get insurance cover. Not for me or any of the principals. Not at this stage. Not for skiing.’ The last phrase had been pointed. She went back to dissecting her trout with a deeply solicitous look. This last, after fifteen years of marriage, her husband was equipped to judge as definitely calculating and unconnected with the condition of the fish. ‘We did have New Year together, darling,’ Molly added as an apparent after-thought before looking up again with an ingenuous smile. ‘That was bliss. And worth it. Even for a week. Such luck.’ They had spent the holiday in the West Indies. Their separate demanding careers tended to make such episodes both rare and memorable.
‘And now we could press the same luck and go to Leningrad together?’ Amused, he watched her expression change to one of too innocent surprise. He had suspected the Russian problem had remained pending.
‘I wasn’t suggesting …’
‘Except obliquely,’ he offered indulgently. ‘Easter weekend, you said? That’s March the twenty-seventh. I could make it, I suppose. But only just. It’d be tight.’
‘Out Thursday, back Sunday. It’s only three nights.’
‘Four days.’
‘I could go on my own.’
‘With the unlucky thirteen members of the Baroque Circle?’
‘I am president this year. And even fourteen is hardly enough to justify the effort.’ Molly frowned. ‘Candy Royce would have been so disappointed. If it had been cancelled. Ten was the absolute minimum. To be registered and paid up by next Thursday. That’s eight weeks before we go. As it is, not everybody going is a proper member of the Circle. You’d think people who joined a Baroque Circle would be keen oh a long weekend in Leningrad. In St Petersburg. Capital of old Russia.’ She gave an irritated sniff, then, in response to Treasure’s mildly interrogative look: ‘Well it is supposed to be the most perfect eighteenth-century city. And the pictures in the Hermitage museum …’
‘Are fabulous, but I believe the best are prebaroque. Medieval and early Renaissance. More wine?’ He held out the bottle of Chablis. She shook her head as he went on. ‘In fairness you said the trip was quite pricey.’
‘But well over thirty people voted for it. When we planned the winter programme last June. We expected twenty-five takers. It was to be the highlight.’ She made a face. ‘Unfortunately the original suggestion was mine. It’s in the minutes of the meeting.’
‘But you weren’t going?’
‘Only because I didn’t think I could get away. Now I can. Now they’ve switched the plays in the repertory. But you’d probably hate it.’ This came too dismissively, but her timing was impeccable, he noted, as always. ‘I don’t mean the place,’ she continued. ‘I mean some of the people who are going. The over-earnest ones. And I don’t know all of them. And you’re not the package tour type.’
‘Not true,’ he answered stoutly. ‘And it must be a very cultured package.’ He sipped at his own replenished glass while fortifying his mind with lofty insistences about his tolerant nature and plebeian origins, though neither condition would have been confirmed by objective examination. ‘You said the hotel was five star?’ The enquiry was meant to sound disinterested.
Molly nodded encouragingly.
‘Mm,’ he mused. ‘Wonder if Red stars mean the same. But then, Russian cuisine has no terrors for anyone who attended an English boarding school. Charter flight from Gatwick?’ added the not yet entirely committed package tourist.
‘No. Scheduled airline from Heathrow.’
‘Oh, that’s good. British Airways?’
‘Aeroflot. The only ones who go there. Very reliable.’ Molly swallowed. ‘Only one class though.’
‘Steerage,’ he pronounced flatly.
‘Economy,’ she corrected unnecessarily.
‘It’s not far.’ He chose a plum from the fruit bowl. ‘But your Circle’s involved in everything baroque? Not just architecture?’ He raised a finger to his brow as he quoted. ‘Baroque. The artistic form embodying the picturesque and unconventional. Er … emerged from the end of the seventeenth century to counter the bleakness of the Reformation … and the classical rigidity of the Renaissance.’ He beamed. ‘Wonder how long since I memorised that? Anyway, baroque includes theatre and music, St Paul’s Cathedral and the gold leaf and lurid blues in all those fruity Italian churches.’
‘Which is why the Leningrad trip includes opera and a concert. Except eighteenth-century composers aren’t guaranteed. There’s a trip to Pushkin, as well. That’s the suburb they renamed after the writer. It has two glorious royal palaces with some marvellous furniture.’
‘Don’t I know Candy Royce?’ he enquired casually casually.
‘Mm. She’s been here for drinks. Big jolly girl. About twenty-eight. Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute. She’s an assistant curator at the Simpson Collection and dreadfully underpaid. Also honorary secretary of the Circle.’ Molly was pouring them both coffee. ‘She’s been dying to go to Leningrad for years. This way she gets there for almost nothing. The travel agency gives her a free place for organising the party.’
‘I don’t remember her being big. More tall and slim. Longish dark hair?’
‘No, Candy has shortish mousey hair, and she’s definitely not slim. You’re thinking of Edwina Apse. She was here the same evening. Bit older than Candy and very glamorous. Made a great fuss of you. They both did,’ Molly punctuated with a tolerant beam. ‘Teaches history at a polytechnic. Except I believe she has a year off to write a book. She’ll be on the trip. Nearly wasn’t. Signed up last week.’
Treasure smiled blandly. ‘So far it sounds an agreeable enough party. I suppose I shouldn’t be the only man?’
‘No, it’s nearly evenly balanced. Jeremy Wander and his wife Felicity …’
‘Sir Jeremy Wander? Baronet? Used to belong to one of my clubs. Isn’t he slightly loopy? Ex regular army. Guards, I suppose?’
‘No. One of those special local regiments. He told me which. I’ve forgotten. Jeremy’s a little eccentric but quite amiable,’ Molly offered carefully. ‘They say he’s a womaniser, but that’s probably an exaggeration. He’s never made a pass at me.’
‘Then he’s got rotten taste,’ Treasure retorted loyally.
‘You are sweet. He’s quite young. Mid-thirties. Even younge
‘Faded aristocracy too hard-up to travel in style?’
‘Not at all. They’re doing up Wander Court. Opening it to the public next year. Going to live there themselves. They’re picking up ideas from wherever they can look at other eighteenth-century piles. They’re both keen members of the Circle.’
‘Wander Court is quite small, surely?’
‘Kind of miniature Blenheim Palace. Not by Vanbrugh, of course, but good, and it’s at the bottom of Easthamptonshire. On a sort of loop between Oxford and Stratford. Anyway, close enough to London, with a big tourist potential.’
Reluctantly Treasure had to concede that a travelling companion with an inherited title probably added an air—even a certain piquancy when one was travelling inside Russia. ‘Any other deserving aristocrats in the group?’
‘Not unless you count the Honourable Mrs Daphne Vauxley whose father was a Lord. Garrulous widow. Late sixties. Used to write a bit. Book reviews mostly. True blue. Supports corporal punishment and the old values. Not your type I’m afraid.’
‘So why do I feel an immediate sympathy for her?’ Treasure countered with humorous perversity.
‘You should save that for Amelia Harwick, the Honourable Daphne’s secretary and companion. Goes everywhere with the old girl. Suppose she can’t afford to do anything else.’
‘Lacks the initiative, perhaps?’
‘You could be right.’ Molly was disinclined to argue. ‘Let’s see, who does that leave? Oh, the three I’ve never met. The ones recruited by the travel agency.’
‘To make up the numbers?’
‘Mm. When it seemed we wouldn’t even get ten.’
‘Presumably they’re deeply interested in the programme?’
‘One hopes so. They’re a married couple called Blinton. From Wimbledon. And a man with a German-sounding name which I’ve forgotten. He lives somewhere in the Midlands.’
‘Rich, retired, jewellery manufacturer from Birmingham. Second generation immigrant who’s potty about gold baroque trinkets,’ Treasure speculated wildly. ‘They made a lot of those in Birmingham once.’
‘Candy’s found out he’s young and plays the cello professionally. In a chamber orchestra. He may have done something else first, of course.’ She gave an indulgent smile over her coffee cup. ‘Oh, and I’ve just remembered, his name’s Rudolph Frenk and his home’s in Coventry. And I’m afraid that’s all we know about him.’
‘And the married couple?’
‘Were squeezed out of an overbooked group going to the Holy Land for Easter. The travel agent suggested they join us. The husband’s definitely retired.’
‘A pious worthy couple, no doubt.’
‘So proper company for Canon Clarence Emdon.’
‘You didn’t say you had a cleric in the group. Splendid.’ Treasure collected clergymen. ‘An authority on Russian icons is he? Anglican?’ This time he was enquiring not guessing.
‘Episcopalian.’
‘Same thing. Scottish or American?’
‘American. One gathers he’s lived here for ages but still behaves as if he’s on a visit. Address in Belgravia. Service flat, I think. He’s not old enough to be retired. Not quite. But he’s not gainfully employed either. Spends a lot of time at the art auctions and says he does a good deal of research. Into paintings, I suppose. He joined the Circle last year. Terribly keen on the Russian trip. I’ve been meaning to have him meet you.’
‘There’s a Mrs Emdon?’
‘Not so far as anyone knows. The canon is big and scholarly. Looks a lot like Oliver Goldsmith.’
‘The playwright? Didn’t he have a famous profile? Huge protruding forehead and a receding chin?’
‘Also a kind of stammer. So does Canon Emdon. He’s quite endearing, and very good company. Gets on well with Nigel Dirving who you do know. He’s coming with us,’ she ended warily.
‘One of your deserving causes. I might have guessed he’d be along. Glad he can afford it.’
‘Don’t suppose he can really but he’s terribly keen. He’s agreed to share a room with Rudolph Frenk.’ She paused. ‘You don’t mind? About Nigel.’
‘Not if Rudolf Frenk doesn’t. He’s the one sharing the room.’
‘I mean, if you came, you wouldn’t let Nigel irritate you?’
‘I’ve never said he irritates me,’ he replied, trying to register injured surprise. ‘It’s just I sometimes find the flamboyant stagey manner rather unnecessary. In such a lamentably failed actor.’
‘He’s not failed entirely. He has a small part in the new film.’
‘Because you fixed it with the director probably.’
She sniffed before answering. ‘I may have put in a word with Bryan. People tend to overlook Nigel Dirving because of that awful divorce.’
‘Which was pretty difficult to overlook in itself.’ Then, smiling, he held up his hands in a surrendering gesture. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I promise to be kind to Nigel in future. I don’t in the least mind his going on your trip. And it’s very good of you to help him the way you do.’ He selected another plum and smiled at that as well. ‘And that’s the whole party?’
‘Except for Reggie and Effie Tate. Tiny mother and tall, middle-aged son. She’s getting on, but still spry and switched on. Especially when it comes to music. Australian. But she’s lived in England for years—to be close to Reggie. She keeps house for him. He’s an architect. Specialises in Georgian restoration. They live in Chichester.’
‘Didn’t you meet them three summers back?’
Molly nodded. ‘During that season at Chichester Theatre. Yes. She came to I don’t know how many performances. Came backstage and introduced herself. Crazy about Noël Coward plays. And that production.’
‘About your performance you mean. It wasn’t such a marvellous production, but there was critical acclaim for Molly Forbes and the set designs.’
‘Aren’t you kind to remember?’ Molly almost purred. ‘Well Reggie Tate used to tour me round Chichester on Saturday mornings inspecting the architectural goodies. And I used to have tea with them both. You’d enjoy them.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘You will come?’ Her eyes had opened especially wide with an expectant expression that matched the plea.
‘Of course. You know I can’t resist caviare.’
‘Or me?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Good.’ Molly leaned over and kissed him.
‘Don’t forget to let the travel agents know I’m coming.’
She nodded, smiling. That wouldn’t be necessary, of course. She’d told them several days before.
Chapter Two
On the morning of Wednesday, March 26th, Sergey Vasilefski left Leningrad’s Vitebsk railway station and crossed over to the Metro. He was a lithe figure of medium height and fair colouring who weaved with a gymnast’s grace through the morning rush-hour crowd that poured from the suburban line terminus. He didn’t use the Metro normally. He did so now quite openly. It was not necessary yet to disguise his movements—or alter his appearance.
He was wearing a short dark leather jacket. It was commoner than his padded topcoat and he would not be expected to check it anywhere. In Russia it’s bad manners not to leave outer clothing in the cloakrooms at restaurants, theatres, and other public places: not to do so also makes the wearer conspicuous as well as unpopular. The scarf he would leave later in the battered fibre suitcase he was carrying. The light woollen gloves he could stuff in his pockets. The cap was in the case already: he never wore anything on his head normally.
Both the Kamenskys knew he was taking a week’s holiday. He officially rented a room in their tiny apartment in Pavlovsk, the suburb from which he regularly commuted. They also knew that he was spending the week in a room borrowed from a friend in central Leningrad, and that the friend was away.
Gregor Kamensky, a working man with no pretensions, had failed to understand why Sergey was taking a vacation in March when he could just as easily have had it in warmer weather. Perhaps being an international telephone operator in the Leningrad Central Exchange, like Sergey, didn’t carry so many privileges, except, Kamensky had mused aloud, it almost had to carry more than you got being a road worker in Pavlovsk. Certainly he knew it didn’t oblige you to take all three weeks of your vacation in the winter as Sergey was doing. It was also beyond his comprehension why a healthy athletic young fellow should always choose to holiday in the city.
-by-david-williams_preview.jpg)
-by-david-williams_preview.jpg)
-by-david-williams_preview.jpg)
