The Witches of St. Petersburg

‘Naughty girl,’ he whispered, just as she shot him straight through the forehead.

The screaming was unbearable as it ricocheted about the courtyard. Militza dropped the gun in the snow and covered her ears. The noise in her head and the pain in her heart were unbearable. The crows that had been nestling in the trees behind launched off their branches at the sound of the gun and dived and bombed and screeched around her. She covered her head as she slowly sank into the snow.

It was done.

‘Good shot!’ shouted Yusupov, as he ran over to join them. ‘You?’ He stopped in his tracks, looking stunned. ‘Militza Nikolayevna, you shot him! You shot Rasputin!’ He smiled broadly as he looked down at her in the snow. ‘Good shot, good shot indeed!’ He patted her on the shoulder and then turned to look at the body lying on the ground. ‘Do you think he’s dead? Oswald?’ he looked quizzically at his friend. ‘You’re a man of the world, you know about these things.’

‘He looks dead to me,’ replied Rayner, his voice quiet.

Felix slowly leant down and ripped the golden cross from around Rasputin’s neck. ‘He was no man of God. He was the Devil himself. The Devil incarnate. Harder to kill than a rabid dog. Twice we tried – and twice he rose again! For you, Madame,’ said Felix, handing Militza the cross. ‘A small trophy for your pains.’

‘Drown him,’ mumbled Militza.

‘But he’s dead,’ said Rayner.

‘Drown him!’ Militza was still kneeling in the snow. ‘Drown him.’

‘There’s no need,’ said Prince Dmitry Pavlovich, who was standing behind Prince Yusupov. He moved forward and kicked the body for good measure, his young, fresh face beaming with delight. ‘He’s dead. The beast is dead, all right! Long live the Tsar! Long live Russia!’

‘Drown him,’ said Militza as slowly and as emphatically as her quivering lips would allow.

‘Just to make sure?’ queried Rayner.

‘No,’ said Stana, looking down at her sister. ‘You cannot canonize a drowned man. You can’t make a saint out of those who perish in water. A soul drowned in water can never come back. So do as my sister says – drown him.’

‘Where?’ asked Prince Dmitry, looking at Yusupov.

‘I don’t know,’ said Felix, who suddenly shivered and retched dramatically. ‘I can’t bear to look at him. He’s the Devil. Satan himself. Even now, lying there…’

In silence they all stared at the corpse, unable to take in what they had done. They were an unlikely group of murderers – two Grand Duchesses, two princes, a deputy from the Duma, a doctor, an army officer, accompanied by a British secret agent.

Suddenly, there was a quiet thud and Militza looked to her left to see that Prince Yusupov had passed out cold in the snow. It was all clearly too much for him. It was going to be up to her to think of a way of disposing of the body.

It would be dawn soon. People would start to ask questions and Rasputin’s followers would be knocking on his door. Even the secret police might start searching the drinking dens of Novaya Derevnaya, looking for their charge. There was no time, no opportunity for depth of deception or any finesse.

‘Throw him into the canal,’ suggested Rayner. ‘The ice should hold the body for a few days; that way we can clear our tracks.’

‘But where?’ asked Prince Dmitry, looking from one to the other.

‘Petrovsky Bridge,’ suggested Militza. ‘It is not far and the water is deep.’

‘We can use my car,’ offered Vladimir Purishkevich.

*

So first they bound Rasputin’s hands and feet with a cord they found in the back of Purishkevich’s car. Next, they took Rasputin’s fur coat out of the basement salon where, earlier in the evening, he’d been fed cakes laced with cyanide and wrapped him in it. And then finally, in a panic, they tore a blue velvet curtain off the wall in the Yusupov Palace and rolled him up inside it. They placed the body into the boot of Vladimir Purishkevich’s car and drove slowly, constantly stalling, with the body bouncing around, to Bolshoi Petrovsky Bridge. Prince Yusupov, who was not deemed well enough to come in the car, retired to the palace in the company of his valet. Militza also insisted that Rayner take Stana home; her car had been waiting on the corner for some two hours now and was surely about to attract attention. Frankly, the fewer involved in the disposal of the body the better.

It was still dark when they finally arrived at the bridge. The moon was hiding its face, almost as if it did not want to bear witness to the heinous crime going on below. However, the wind was up, blowing a dank and bitter cold off the Neva.