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she composed herself. She took his hands in hers as she had those years before on the balcony in Positano.
    ‘Francis,’ she said, ‘I release you from your promise not to take on any more investigations. You are free to go to St Petersburg as far as I am concerned. I hope I have not
made you too unhappy in the meantime. It was my first husband, you see, who went away on the nation’s business and got killed. I couldn’t bear to have it happen again, I really
couldn’t. But I’ve got to let you go. I see that now. I hope you don’t think I’m some sort of jailer, Francis. Please forgive me for the whole thing.’
    Powerscourt kissed the top of her head and held her very tight. ‘Might I ask, Lucy, what brought about this change of mind? Have you had a revelation? Has somebody been to talk to
you?’
    She smiled. ‘I had a visit from Mrs Martin, the wife of the dead man in St Petersburg. His parents are still alive. It’s driving them all mad, not knowing what happened to Mr Martin,
you see. And when the Foreign Office told them they were sending a top investigator to find out the truth, they cheered up, they thought they were going to find out what had been going on. Then
they were even more despondent when they learnt the investigator wasn’t going. She said it wasn’t fair that I could keep you safe at home while he went off to die. She said Britain
would have lost every war it ever fought if the wives stopped their men going off to defend the country. She made me feel rather selfish, actually, Francis.’
    ‘Did you tell her you had changed your mind, Lucy?’
    ‘No, I didn’t. I hadn’t, you see, changed my mind, not then. That came later while I was sitting by the window waiting for you to come home.’
    Powerscourt handled his wife very delicately in the two days that followed her change of mind before his departure. He could only guess at how much it must have cost her. He could not imagine
how she would worry while he was away. Whatever else he did, he must try to find the answers as quickly as possible. He took her out to her favourite restaurant. He promised to take her to Paris
when he returned. Above all, he told himself constantly, he must not crow, he must not boast, he must not sing for joy as he walked about the house. For Lord Francis Powerscourt would never have
told his wife. He would and did tell Johnny Fitzgerald. He was so happy to be back in harness, as he put it to himself, with a difficult case and a romantic location. The curious thing about his
elation was that Lady Lucy saw it too. After twelve years of marriage she could sense her husband’s mood without him having to speak a word. And, although she would not have told her husband
this, she was happy because he was happy.
    Mikhail Shaporov slept all the way across the Channel. He slept through France. Powerscourt began to wonder if he was going to sleep all the way to Russia when he finally
appeared just outside Cologne. They had crossed the Rhine, the first of Europe’s great rivers the train would traverse on its long trek across a continent. It began snowing just before
Hamburg. The fields and the farmhouses disappeared in a soft carpet, the sharp edges of the buildings in the cities disappeared in a white blanket. Mikhail dragged Powerscourt to an open window,
admitting freezing wind and torrents of snow, to see the spray shooting up and curving gracefully backwards as the great dark engine pounded forward through the white snow. They were shedding
passengers now faster than the replacements were coming on board. Considerable numbers got off at Hannover. More got off for the architectural glories of Potsdam, more still for the pomp and
swagger of Berlin. There were only a few hardy souls left for the long haul to Warsaw and the final route through to the Baltic glories of Riga and Tallinn. At last, after three days’
travelling, at half past six in the evening, they arrived in St Petersburg. Mikhail had