Murder At The Masque Read Online Free PDF

intruder.
    ‘Nihilists,’ he hissed conspiratorially.
    The inspector sighed. He had heard it all before. ‘I regret,
Votre Altesse Imperiale
, it is not possible to provide a permanent guard.’
    The Grand Duke’s eyes bulged.
Not
was not a word to use to princes, let alone to Grand Dukes. Jovial smile was replaced by Jove’s thunder.
    ‘Not! You want an assassination of a Romanov in your midst?’
    The inspector did not. Even less did he want a repetition of the unfortunate incident some years ago when another Russian nobleman had killed a police guard under the impression he was a Nihilist. The incident had been brushed aside as an allowable mistake, for after all, these Nihilists were cunning. Nevertheless Fouchard did not intend it should happen again, least of all to him. He wavered.
    ‘If the Prince of Wales has a guard, the Romanovs have a guard,’ said the Grand Duke belligerently.
    The inspector’s brow cleared. ‘Ah, the
match
. But that is different. Naturally we will be there. We do not want the Prince de Galles assassinated.’ Too late he realised this could have been more tactfully phrased.
    The whole six foot five inches of offended Romanov was concentrated on him, then unexpectedly roars of laughter filled the room as the Grand Duke slapped the unfortunate Fouchard on the back. ‘Only one Prince of Wales, but plenty more Grand Dukes, eh?’
    Another roar of laughter and thankful at his escape the inspector slipped out, mopping his forehead. He was not looking forward to this week at all. First, guarding the Prince of Wales as he laid the first stone of the new jetty onThursday; then trying to keep up with His Royal Highness’s movements in and out of various clubs and/or beds for the rest of the day; then on Friday this cricket match, to guard both a Wales and a Grand Duke. Cricket? Sometimes he wondered who ran this town. That Lord Brougham had a lot to answer for – or rather that
salaud
who prevented his lordship from progressing into Italy in 1834 as he had intended, with the result that he was forced to stop in a dirty little fishing village that was quite happy looking after itself. On top of that, Paris had informed him that an inspector from the English Scotland Yard was coming here. The English.
Pah
!
    One of the many sons of the assassinated Emperor Alexander II, sandwiched unimportantly between the eldest and the youngest, the Grand Duke Igor had earned the displeasure of his father by marrying the divorced wife of a remote relative, and while his father could hardly therefore deny her the status of Grand Duchess he could, and did, refuse permission for the Grand Duke to live in Russia. Indeed he leapt at the chance. Igor was not of sufficiently serious disposition to please his austere father, and as the requisite number of sons remained to fill key army posts, Igor was altogether too volatile to be left to his own devices. Cheerfully Igor had taken his new duchess, 120,000 roubles in lieu of a court allowance for his wife, his cook Boris and his small cat Misha to whom he was most attached, and departed to join his Imperial relatives in Paris. Here they lived a carefree life until the assassination of his father in 1881.
    After the funeral Igor departed from Russia convinced the Nihilists lurked behind every tree. He was proved right when in 1890 a small group of émigré Russians in Paris turned out to be Nihilists lying low as was their wont, patiently waiting for their opportunity to exterminate more Romanovs. Despite the assertion of the Sûreté that theyhad been disposed of, Igor remained deeply suspicious and when Anarchists terrorised Paris with bombs during 1893 and ’94 he packed his bags, and those of his Grand Duchess, and accompanied by Boris, though not by Misha, he departed for London where Anarchists had not yet publicly reared their revolutionary heads. The small group that existed, he was informed by Special Branch at Scotland Yard, was under careful watch, and the