Blotto, Twinks and the Heir to the Tsar Read online

  ‘I would advise you to liquidate his sister at the same time,’ said the priest. ‘She is a troublesome minx.’

  ‘I will see that it is done.’

  ‘It does not pay to get on the wrong side of Fyodor Vlachko, does it, Comrade?’

  ‘No, it certainly does not.’ The revolutionary chuckled.

  ‘So you have already liquidated the Bashuskys, and next you will—’

  ‘No,’ Vlachko interrupted. ‘The Bashuskys are still alive.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I had to travel here to Leningrad before I could arrange their execution. So I have delayed the firing squad until I return to Moscow.’ Fyodor Vlachko chuckled again. It was not a pretty sound. ‘After all I have suffered at the Bashuskys’ hands, I want to be there in person to witness their liquidation.’

  ‘A perfectly reasonable wish, Comrade.’

  But then the two men were distracted by the riotous reaction of the huge crowd around them. Blotto had just finished his oration with a rousing cry which he thought was ‘Play up, play up, and play the game!’ (but in fact was ‘The Romanovs have returned to take their rightful place as rulers of all the Russias!’) and been greeted by an ovation even greater than any that had preceded it.

  Twinks’s mind was racing with possibilities. She and Blotto were in a worse glue pot than they had imagined. Somehow they had to escape. If only Petrovsky were with them . . . He, she knew, would find a way around their difficulties.

  Just as had happened when Blotto had willed it in Butyrka Prison, her wish was granted by the appearance of Count Kasimir Petrovsky. Twinks saw him pressing through the crowd, coming straight towards her. She felt huge relief. He, she knew, would rescue them once again.

  But, strangely, he appeared not to notice her. Petrovsky walked straight past and greeted Fyodor Vlachko with an enthusiastic handshake. ‘Our plan appears to have worked, Comrade!’ he said. ‘Death to all White Russians!’

  29

  A Point of Honour

  Twinks acted by instinct more than calculation. She rushed across to the Lagonda and said to Corky Froggett, ‘Take the top down and be ready to drive for your life.’

  ‘Very good, Milady,’ said the unruffled chauffeur.

  Then Twinks hurtled across to the space around the microphone where her brother was being fêted and congratulated by ecstatic (and, she now knew, bribed and dissembling) members of the crowd.

  ‘Come on, Blotto me old claw hammer,’ she said, ‘time for your victory parade!’

  He didn’t have time to say anything, as Twinks grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the Lagonda, now open to the elements with its roof down and Corky in place at the wheel. ‘Stand up in the back,’ said Twinks, ‘and wave like mad!’

  Blotto did as instructed.

  Twinks then, to the astonishment of their operators, grabbed the camera and microphone which had been recording the Heir to the Tsar’s speech and sprinted to the Lagonda. Tossing the camera apparatus into the dickie, she jumped into the passenger seat. The crowd, she noted with satisfaction, had welled around the car, separating them from Vlachko, Yakhunin and Petrovsky.

  ‘Drive like fury!’ she said to Corky. ‘And wave like mad!’ she said again to Blotto.

  The chauffeur pressed the self-starter and the great car lurched forward. The crowd parted to make way for them, waving back at the Heir to the Tsar and cheering valiantly.

  ‘Straight for the Polish border, Corky!’ cried Twinks, ‘And then back to Tawcester Towers as quick as a cheetah on spikes!’

  Twinks had told Blotto he could sit down as soon as they had left the crowd outside the Winter Palace and he did so with some relief. He still hadn’t a clue what was going on, but felt confident, as ever, that his sister had things under control. And a warm glow suffused his being. He hadn’t anticipated that the people of Russia would respond with such enthusiasm to their introduction to cricket. He had the satisfaction of a job well jobbed.

  There was quite a strong police presence on the streets of St Petersburg, but they made no attempt to stop the Lagonda at any of their checkpoints. Indeed, they saluted and cheered. The red flag on the bonnet was still doing its stuff.

  Twinks’s photographic memory had all the maps of the Northern European landmass at her fingertips, so she could guide Corky through the tangled streets of St Petersburg on the most direct route to Poland. All seemed set fair.

  But once they had left the city behind and were heading west on the icy open road, Twinks instructed the chauffeur to stop. He did so very gently to avoid skidding.

  ‘There’s something we haven’t taken into account, Blotto me old bathroom cabinet,’ she said soberly.

  ‘And what might that be, Twinks me old egg-coddler?’

  ‘The Bashuskys.’

  ‘But I thought they’d been coffinated. The firing squad. Tough Gorgonzola and all that rombooley, but not a lot we can do about it.’

  ‘No. They’re still alive. In Butyrka Prison. They’re not going to be shot until Fyodor Vlachko can get to Moscow to witness their deaths.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be jugged like a hare!’ said Blotto.

  There was a long silence. Both of them knew that there was only one thing people of their breeding could do in such circumstances. Such things were points of honour for families like the Lyminsters.

  ‘Change direction, Corky,’ said Twinks. ‘We’re going back to Moscow.’

  30

  Doing the Decent Thing

  Once again they drove non-stop back to Moscow, with Blotto and Corky alternating at the wheel. They were glad they had brought the jerrycans of petrol in the Lagonda’s secret compartment because they saw no signs of fuel depots on the road.

  Twinks’s memory guided them through the streets of Moscow until they ended up directly outside the Butyrka Prison. The Hispano-Suiza with its flag of validation was still parked directly outside the grim building.

  ‘Wait in the car, Corky,’ she said. ‘Keep the engine running. Come on, Blotto.’

  As ever obedient to his sister’s least command, he got out of the Lagonda. He was of course still dressed in the uniform of the Heir to the Tsar, and the King George false beard still clung to his cheeks.

  Twinks led him across to the forbidding main doors of the Butyrka Prison. ‘Cross your fingers and tippy-toes, Blotters,’ she said, ‘and pray to the Great Wilberforce that the guards’ rotas work in our favour!’ Then she lifted the massive metal knocker and let it clang down on to its metal boss. The reverberation seemed to shudder through the entire building.

  The Great Wilberforce – or whichever other deity was keeping a kindly eye on Blotto and Twinks that day – was fortunately up to snuff. The prison doors creaked open to reveal the two people whom she most wanted to see in the world at that moment – the guards, Ivan and Leonid, who had previously escorted them from the holding cell back to their cell to Death Row.

  ‘Behold,’ cried Twinks, dramatically pointing to her brother, ‘the Heir to the Tsar!’

  Ivan and Leonid immediately fell to their knees, crying out praises of their imperial saviour. Both grabbed hold of the Tsarevich’s hands and started covering them with stubbly kisses.

  ‘Hey, rein in the roans for a moment!’ said Blotto, who had after all been to an English public school and didn’t like the idea of boddoes kissing each other on any part of their anatomy. ‘There’s no need to behave like French gigolos!’

  ‘There is something the Tsarevich requires of you,’ said Twinks in a voice horribly reminiscent of her mother’s.

  ‘Anything,’ said Ivan.

  ‘Whatever the rightful heir to all the Russias commands us to do,’ said Leonid, ‘we will do it!’

  ‘Then release the Bashusky family from their cells and bring them here!’ cried Twinks.

  ‘We will do that, Your Excellency,’ said Leonid, not sure what title she should be accorded.

  ‘And we will do it quickly,’ said Ivan. ‘We have just received a teleg
ram from Comrade Fyodor Vlachko saying that he will soon be here to witness the execution of all the Bashuskys by firing squad.’

  ‘Then go and get them without delay!’ screamed Twinks.

  While the two guards dashed off into the gloomy interior of the prison, Twinks ordered Corky Froggett out of the Lagonda and into the Hispano-Suiza where he was instructed to start up the engine. ‘And you take the wheel of the Lag, Blotto!’ she ordered her brother.

  The somewhat bewildered Bashusky family were hustled out of the doors of Butyrka Prison by Ivan and Leonid. ‘What’s going on?’ demanded the Count.

  ‘Are we leaving Moscow?’ asked Masha in despair. ‘I want to go back there!’

  Twinks did something she’d wanted to do ever since she’d met the Bashuskys and shouted, ‘Shut up!’ Then she ordered them into the Hispano-Suiza.

  Just as they were getting in, a black Mercedes-Benz limousine screeched to a halt in front of the prison. From the front of its bonnet waved a red flag with a black hammer and sickle on it.

  Urging Corky to drive off in the Hispano-Suiza, Twinks leapt forward and with a deft twist of the wrist broke off the thin flagpole on the Mercedes. Then, before Count Kasimir Petrovsky, Fyodor Vlachko and Father Kyril Yakhunin had time to get all the way out of the limousine, she leapt into the Lagonda’s passenger seat crying, ‘Drive like the wind on wheels, Blotto!’

  He needed no second bidding. In a fusillade of flying ice, the Lagonda hurtled off in pursuit of the Hispano-Suiza.

  The time it took the Bolshevik conspirators to get back into the Mercedes gave the two other cars a slight advantage, but that was quickly eroded. Although Twinks’s recollection of the Moscow road map was perfect, she did not know the network of minor roads and back alleys like the Muscovites in the limousine. Soon the front of the Mercedes was nudging against the bumper of the Lagonda.

  But when they reached the first roadblock Twinks’s calculations paid off. The Bolshevik guards waved through the Hispano-Suiza and the Lagonda, saluting fervently as they did so. But they weren’t about to do the same with any vehicle that didn’t display the appropriate flag. The Mercedes was stopped at the barrier and when the people inside it started to argue and bluster about this treatment, they were all arrested.

  Meanwhile, the Hispano-Suiza and the Lagonda sped on towards the Polish border. And more than once from the second car ecstatic cries of ‘Larksissimo!’ and ‘Hoopee-doopee!’ were heard.

  31

  The Retreat from Moscow

  Once they had crossed Poland and re-entered Germany, they stopped by a bridge over a fast-flowing river. Into it, ceremoniously, Twinks threw the camera and recording equipment that she had seized in St Petersburg. The visual record of her brother’s representation of the Heir to the Tsar was lost forever.

  There then followed a discussion as to whether they should complete the journey via Berlin or not. The Count and Countess Bashusky were quite keen on the idea – they hadn’t done all the shopping they’d wanted to on Twinks’s account at KaDeWe. Masha, predictably enough, was miserable because she wanted to go back to Moscow.

  Sergei, on the other hand, was absolutely desperate to return to Berlin. If he was not allowed to see Natasha Lewinsky again, he swore he would shoot himself.

  Twinks thought the best plan would be for them to separate. The Bashuskys should drive the Hispano-Suiza to Berlin, while she, Blotto and Corky took a more direct route to Calais, whence they could catch a ferry back to England.

  The first argument put forward against this plan was that none of the Bashuskys had ever done anything useful like learn to drive. Twinks was halfway through suggesting that maybe Corky would have to delay his return to Tawcester Towers to chauffeur them when she encountered a totally unexpected objection.

  It came from her brother. To her surprise, Blotto sided with the Bashuskys. He wanted to go back to Berlin.

  ‘But why, you clip-clop? You’re still a marked man there. What is there in Berlin you want?’ Blotto looked deeply embarrassed. Twinks asked in a shocked voice, ‘It’s not that waitress – or should I say “waiter” – Jutta, is it?’

  ‘No, by Denzil!’ replied an equally shocked Blotto.

  ‘Then I haven’t a bat’s squeak of an idea what . . .’ And suddenly it came to her. ‘Oh no. It’s your cricket bat, isn’t it?’

  Blotto nodded sheepishly.

  It was decided that the first port of call should be the Lewinsky mansion. Sergei Bashusky should at least be given the chance to speak to Natasha Lewinsky. And if she refused to see him or if her father hounded them off the premises – which Twinks thought were the most likely outcomes – at least Sergei would have tried. Then he could return to Tawcester Towers and continue to threaten suicide there.

  The failure of their primary mission still rankled with both Twinks and Blotto. They had left their stately home with assurances that they’d return there without the Bashuskys, and the prospect of that happening had become more and more remote as their adventures continued.

  Blotto and Twinks had never before failed in one of their missions and the knowledge that they were about to do so really hurt. Apart from anything else, the wrath of the Dowager Duchess would be terrible to behold.

  Such gloomy thoughts preoccupied both of them as the Hispano-Suiza and the Lagonda drew up on the gravel outside the Lewinsky mansion.

  Sergei Bashusky got out of the back of his car and approached the main entrance. He lifted the knocker, but before he had time to drop it, the door opened to reveal a furious Pavel Lewinsky. This time he was carrying a shotgun.

  ‘So, you have come back, you little rat, have you?’ he cried in fury.

  ‘I have come back because I love Natasha!’ the pimply youth protested.

  ‘“Love” – is that what you call it? Destroying the reputation of my daughter!’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  Natasha emerged from the house behind her father. She looked pale but still beautiful. ‘What my Papa means is that I am pregnant.’

  ‘Yes!’ roared Pavel Lewinsky. ‘And she swears that you are the father! Which doesn’t say a lot for her taste. Or her morals.’

  ‘It is true, Papa.’

  ‘I know. I wish any other explanation were true, but this is the one I have to come to terms with.’ He waved his shotgun dangerously in Sergei’s direction. ‘You have ruined my daughter and there is only one way her honour can be salvaged. You will have to marry her!’

  ‘I cannot think of anything I would like to do more,’ said Sergei Bashusky, sounding, for the first time in his life, rather noble.

  Natasha ran from behind Pavel Lewinsky towards the boy and threw her arms around him. ‘Now,’ she cried, ‘we will never be parted!’

  ‘The wedding will have to be arranged very quickly,’ said her father peevishly. ‘That way maybe we can avoid scandal.’

  By this time the other Bashuskys had emerged from the back of the Hispano-Suiza. The Count was smiling a rather calculating smile. ‘If our son,’ he said, ‘becomes an official part of your family . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ said Pavel Lewinsky wearily.

  ‘. . . then you cannot really afford not to do the honourable thing and provide accommodation to his parents for the rest of their lives, can you?’

  ‘No,’ said Pavel Lewinsky miserably.

  Though Blotto had elaborate plans of storming the Berlin police headquarters to reclaim his cricket bat, in fact the object was achieved much more simply by Twinks.

  Having first concealed her brother in the secret compartment of the Lagonda, she ordered Corky Froggett to drive up to the front doors of the Hotel Adlon. At the reception desk she apologised for their hasty departure some weeks before. Her brother, she explained, was a dangerous lunatic, and she’d had to – at very short notice – take him to a clinic in Switzerland where he would be incarcerated for the rest of his life.

  She would now like to pay the bill for their previous visit and to pick up the belongings of h
er unfortunate brother.

  The management of the Hotel Adlon, not caring what she did so long as their bill got paid, were instantly cooperative. From behind the counter they produced the club that, in his lunatic frenzy, her brother had used against some of Berlin’s finest policemen.

  Having never seen one, they didn’t know that the club was in fact a cricket bat.

  When they were safely outside the city on the road to the English Channel, Twinks made Corky stop the car to release Blotto from his temporary incarceration.

  She handed him the cricket bat.

  ‘Oh, this is pure creamy éclair,’ said Blotto.

  And he hugged the bat to him, sniffing its reassuring smell of linseed oil, all the way back to Tawcester Towers.

  32

  Back to the Status Quo

  Blotto and Twinks felt that they returned home in triumph, but they wouldn’t have known it from the reception they received from their mother. She was not of the generation that believed children should ever receive praise. It would only go to their heads and make them pert.

  Nor did the Dowager Duchess comment on the fact that they had returned without the Bashuskys. That is what she had wanted them to do and what they’d said they’d do, so the details of how they’d done it were of no further interest to her.

  The other bonus from their excursion was discovered by Corky Froggett as he primped and polished every tiniest part of the Lagonda to return it to its direct-from-the-factory perfection. In the secret compartment, unnoticed by Blotto in his most recent occupation of the space, the chauffeur found the gold bars that Father Kyril Yakhunin had put there for safe keeping (both the ones he’d been given for inventing a Danish Heir to the Tsar and the ones he’d been given for inventing an English one). They made a welcome contribution to the escalating costs of maintaining an estate on the scale of Tawcester Towers.

  Blotto and Twinks never heard of the fate of the Bolshevik conspirators who had so nearly ended their lives, but what in fact happened was predictable enough. After a period of enjoying the corrupt benefits of power and of liquidating their enemies, Fyodor Vlachko, Count Kasimir Petrovsky and Father Kyril Yakhunin were unseated by a new regime who quickly liquidated them.