Read To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History) for Free Online Page B

parents-in-law and especially his wife’s young brothers. As Romanovs, the family had nothing to fear from the law, but Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia would prefer to avoid incurring the Tsar’s displeasure by harbouring a suspect.
    The Sergei Palace was an imposing stone building on a prominent corner of the Nevski Prospekt, Petrograd’s busiest thoroughfare. It overlooked the Anichkov Bridge over the Fontanka Canal, and was opposite the palace of Maria Fyodorovna, the Tsar’s mother. Above its lower floors there rose a tall piano nobile or ballroom floor adorned on the outside with pilasters. The upper levels were occupied by the Anglo-Russian Hospital, one of many such charitably funded hospitals founded to deal with casualties brought back from the front. Dmitri Pavlovich had donated the space and a 200-bed hospital was installed in 1915. Its staff and equipment were a ‘gift from Britain to Russia’, having been funded by public subscription and promoted by the Foreign Office and the British Red Cross. Lady Muriel Paget and Lady Sybil Grey ran the hospital with the help of British doctors and nurses and a small complement of Russian Red Cross officials. Dmitri was glad to do something to help – noblesse oblige, and all that – and besides, his butler had hanged himself in the building so he did not want to be rattling around, when on leave, in a great shell of a place that had felt spooky ever since. The hospital had moved in during the winter of 1915, when plumbing and baths, sadly lacking before, had been installed. Family retainers (‘swarms’ of them, according to the exasperated Lady Grey) continued to occupy the attics. Dmitri’s apartment was accessible by a door from the main entrance hall and by a concealed staircase which led up to the doctor’s rooms.
    As a Romanov, Dmitri could be constrained only by the Tsar himself. Yusupov must have felt relatively safe. The two young men had plenty to discuss, not least the detention in her own home of Madame Marianna Derfelden, the stepdaughter of Dmitri’s father. She was one of their own circle and, it was said, a former lover of Dmitri’s. Somebody must have told the investigators that she had been among the women present at the Yusupov Palace. She loathed Rasputin’s influence over the Tsarina but was the sister of one of his leading supporters. Her detention, as it turned out, did not cause her great hardship. Her mother wrote later:
When we arrived at 8 Theatre Square, where Marianna lived, we were stopped by two soldiers who let us through only after taking down our names. All the highest society was at Marianna’s! Some ladies she barely knew arrived in order to express their sympathy with her. Officers came up to kiss her hand. 3
     
    Another hot topic was Dmitri’s telephone call to the Tsarina before the party the previous Saturday night. He had heard that she suspected him of involvement, and had rung Tsarskoye Selo and asked to see her. She refused. This was serious, for the imperial family had taken Dmitri under their wing when he was a boy, treated him fairly and knew him well. For the Tsarina to snub him like this, she must be sure that he and Felix Yusupov had something to hide.
    And worse was to come. At lunchtime, a telephone call from an aide-de-camp at Tsarskoye Selo informed Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich that the Tsarina ordered him to remain at the Sergei Palace under house arrest. He was furious, knowing that only the Tsar could legally issue such an order. The Tsarina had married into the royal family over twenty years ago and had never fitted in; the Romanovs, Yusupovs, Obolenskis and Galitzines – the aristocrats of Russia – had never liked her; she was prissy and boring and dull. But Tsar Nicholas, everyone knew, did exactly what the Tsarina told him to, and he was an autocrat who could do anything. Dmitri accepted her command. What else could he do?
    Visitors started to appear. And among them all