The two agents wanted to talk to Rasputin; they didn’t say why. But when Katya went to Rasputin’s bedroom to wake him up she found that he had not yet come home. This was unusual.
Maria, Varvara and Anya rose hurriedly and dressed. One of the Okhrana men went off to find whoever had been in charge of the block overnight, and got hold of the yard superintendent. He confirmed that a big car with a canvas hood had rolled up after midnight. He had spoken to its passenger, had seen this passenger being welcomed by Rasputin himself at the back door, and later he had seen both Rasputin and the visitor leave in the car towards the city centre.2
Back in the flat, the Okhrana men heard whispering and murmuring between the girls and the maid. When they questioned Katya, a woman of twenty-nine, she admitted that somebody had called at the kitchen door at the back of the flat at around half-past twelve the previous night, and Rasputin had gone out with whoever it was. She slept in a curtained-off corner of the kitchen, and she had heard voices. That was all she had to say.
The girls volunteered no more. They were worried. The two taciturn snoopers remained on the premises, and one of them muttered into the telephone. Other people would start turning up soon. People came every day to see Rasputin and hear him talk. These days he was at his best in the morning, before he’d had a drink.
Maria, at nineteen the elder daughter and already engaged to be married, knew her father had expected to go out with Prince Felix Yusupov (known to his friends as ‘the Little One’) to the Yusupov Palace in the middle of the night. He had told her so and she wouldn’t forget something like that – she knew what the inside of a palace was like, having been privately presented to the Tsarina, and she had heard that Yusupov’s houses were as splendid as the Winter Palace itself. She had even walked past the endless yellow and white frontage of the one on the Moika. She knew Yusupov only by sight; he was a tall, slender, epicene young man.
At about eight o’clock, Rasputin’s niece Anya, a smart and resourceful girl, telephoned to Maria (Mounya) Golovina – most likely out of the hearing of the Okhrana men. Mounya was the friend who had originally introduced Rasputin to Yusupov, but Rasputin had specifically instructed his daughters not to tell Mounya where he was going the previous night because Yusupov didn’t want her tagging along uninvited.3 Mounya was older, about thirty like Yusupov, and an educated woman who drank in everything Rasputin said. She had a pale, tight little face and was forever at the flat. A good many of Rasputin’s hangers-on were well-off women like her, who wore furs and smart hats with aigrettes and well-cut, tailored suits, even in wartime. But Mounya was a good sort.
Anya asked Mounya to call the Little One and find out what was going on; she thought he might have been going out with her uncle last night. Mounya confirmed that Rasputin had said that he was going somewhere special, but she said that if he had gone out with Felix Yusupov they’d probably have gone to the gypsies. That meant going out to the Islands and dancing and drinking all night, so they would still be asleep, and there was nothing to worry about. He would be home soon. She would be over later.4
Rasputin’s close friends, Aron Simanovich and Father Isodor, arrived a little later. They were already concerned because Rasputin had told them where he was going and promised to telephone to say he was safe, but he had not done so. Out of consideration for the girls’ feelings, they did not add that they had already made enquiries at the police station at 61 Moika and had heard rumours of trouble at the Yusupov Palace opposite.5 Ivan Manasevich Manuilov, another man whom the girls knew, came in, and then some ladies – it was normal for a crowd to gather at Rasputin’s home. The samovar was kept steaming and conversation wandered, while anxiety increasingly nagged at Rasputin’s two daughters; Simanovich was obviously on edge, and nobody would tell them why. The sisters knew their father had become important in this city. It wasn’t everyone who got phone calls from the Tsarina herself. He was the peasant who consorted with royalty. Often he was called to the royal residence at Tsarskoye Selo several times in a week. At school there were girls who sneered at them behind their back for having come from Siberia and being the daughters of an unlettered muzhik (peasant), but their father had influence, and those girls were somehow wary of the Rasputina sisters.
They wished he would turn up; it was mortifying. All these women – they only hoped he would be sober when he did. The Okhrana men asked a lot of questions but nobody could tell them anything. Having made their first communication back to headquarters the two officers remained on the premises, waiting.
Fifteen miles from the city centre Her Majesty the Tsarina Alexandra was at home with her four daughters at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. It was one of many mansions on the royal estate, one of which belonged to her great friend, Anna Vyrubova, a portly woman who looked older than her thirty years.
It was Vyrubova who got a call from Mounya Golovina that Saturday morning. She learned that Rasputin, ‘Our Friend’ as he was known to the imperial couple, had gone out the night before and failed to return home. It is possible that something was also said about Yusupov.
Vyrubova herself had received death threats in the past. Rasputin’s enemies thought that he, Vyrubova and the Tsarina made up a malevolent triumvirate of power behind the Tsar. At this time she was spending her days in her own home but sleeping at the Alexander Palace, to which the Tsarina had invited her for her own protection.6 Vyrubova made the Tsarina aware that Rasputin’s absence was giving cause for concern.
Back in the city, the Minister of the Interior, Alexander Protopopov, had received an early-morning tip-off from the Governor of Petrograd, Alexander Balk, that Rasputin was rumoured to have been shot at the Yusupov Palace in the early hours. As a result, Protopopov made an incognito visit to Rasputin’s apartment and discovered that he had not returned home.
Later that morning Protopopov signed Decree No.573 initiating an immediate and secret investigation into the ‘disappearance of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin’. As chief investigator, Protopopov appointed General P.K. Popov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Corps of Gendarmes. Popov was an energetic and dedicated investigator who specialised in political enquiry. Prior to 1914 he had been head of the city’s Okhrana Department. His first move was to descend on the policemen who had been called out to the Yusupov Palace and the officers stationed on the opposite side of the canal and take statements. Viewed from the police station, all arrivals and departures at the tall central doors of the palace across the canal were illuminated as on a distant stage. And how sound carries across water. Last night something had been going on all right, specifically in the courtyard in front of a house that adjoined the palace. That house was less imposing than the main building and set back from the road, but it too belonged to the Yusupovs.
Soon, a carefully worded telegram was sent to the Tsar at the Stavka, the wartime Army Command Headquarters at Moghilev several hundred miles south of Petrograd, stating that, on the night of Friday 16 December,
by house 94 on the Moika owned by Prince Yusupov, a policeman on duty heard a few revolver shots and was soon invited to the study of Prince Yusupov, where he himself was and the unknown person who introduced himself as Purishkevich. The latter said ‘I am Purishkevich. Rasputin is dead. If you love the Tsar and the homeland, you’ll keep your mouth shut.’ The policeman reported this to his superior. The investigation conducted this morning has established that one of Yusupov’s guests, about 3.00a.m., was shooting in the courtyard adjacent to building 94 that has an entrance leading directly to the Prince’s study. A human cry was heard and the sound of a departing motor-car. The shooter was in a field uniform. The immediate examination of the snow revealed blood spots. When questioned at the City Governor’s Office, the young prince stated that he’d had a party that night, but Rasputin was not there.