Enquiries at Rasputin’s flat at Gorokhovaya 64 revealed that on the 16th December at 9.00p.m. Rasputin, as he always did, left the bodyguards attached to his flat and the motor-car, telling them he would not be going out that night and to get some sleep. The interrogation of domestic servants and the yard man established that at 12.30a.m. a big canvas-covered motor approached, in which sat an unknown person and the driver. The unknown person went through the back door to Rasputin’s flat, where the latter appeared to be expecting him, since he greeted him as an old acquaintance and went out with him through the same back door. They got in the car and drove down Gorokhovaya Street towards Morskaya Street.
Rasputin has not returned home and efforts to find him have so far proved unsuccessful. There are strong grounds to assume that he was shot in Yusupov’s courtyard, his body taken out of town and hidden away.7
This Okhrana briefing went directly to the Tsar in person. The idea that Rasputin might have been murdered would appal him. The scenes the Tsarina would make; the blame, the resentment, the hysteria. On the other hand, he might now regain some authority in his own household…
The naming of Vladimir Purishkevich, a well-known member of the Duma (parliament) and monarchist loudly opposed to Rasputin, would have dismayed Tsar Nicholas, but not as much as the mention of Prince Felix Yusupov, who was married to his niece. He must also have been concerned to learn that his second cousin and one-time protégé, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, had also been present at the Yusupov Palace that Friday night. But Dmitri had always been close – too close – to Felix.8
That afternoon the Tsarina – German by birth, but brought up in England – scribbled a frantic note to the Tsar at the Stavka in her sometimes incoherent Russian.
We are sitting together – can imagine our feelings – thoughts – our Friend has disappeared. Yesterday A[nna Vyrubova] saw him and he said Felix asked him to come in the night, a motor would fetch him to see Irina…
This night big scandal at Yusupov’s house – big meeting, Dmitri [Pavlovich], Purishkevich etc. all drunk, Police heard shots, Purishkevich ran out screaming to the police that our Friend was killed.
Police searching…
Felix wished to leave tonight for Crimea, [I] begged Kalinin [Protopopov] to stop him…
Felix claims He never came to the house and never asked him. Seems like quite a paw [a trap]. I still trust in God’s mercy that one has only driven Him off somewhere…
I cannot and won’t believe he has been killed. God have mercy…
…come quickly – nobody will dare to touch her [Anna Vyrubova] or do anything when you are here.
Felix often came to him here…9
Protopopov sent a memo to the head of the Palace Guard, General Voikov. Voikov was not at Tsarskoye Selo this weekend. Protopopov’s note contained more information about what Rasputin had been wearing – ‘an expensive shirt and a fur coat’ – and added that a party had taken place at the Yusupov Palace the night before and the Gendarmerie had now begun a full investigation.
For my part I have directed that the investigation is to be conducted according to martial law in order to have all the circumstances of the case elucidated thoroughly and without delay. In accordance with Her Majesty’s orders kindly go on Monday directly to Tsarskoye Selo without calling at Petrograd on your way.10
Mounya Golovina had rung Yusupov as she promised. She knew he was staying at the palace of his father-in-law Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, further along the Moika, while his own set of apartments at the Yusupov Palace was refurbished. The servants told her ‘they’ were still asleep; which supported her theory that Yusupov and Rasputin had been out at the gypsy encampment.
When she arrived at Rasputin’s apartment on Gorokhovaya Street it was full of people, some looking concerned yet reluctant to voice fears that might distress Rasputin’s daughters. The girls were very tense. Mounya made some excuse to take Maria out with her to order more refreshments, and together they made their way past snow piles down the salt-strewn street to a local fruit shop, which had a telephone. Mounya made the call, but this time the servants told her Yusupov had gone out. She left a message. They went back to the flat, hoping that he would soon ring her back.
A couple of miles north, across the wide River Neva separating fashionable Petrograd from the St Peter and St Paul Fortress and the well-wooded Islands, a bridge guard called Fyodor Kyzmin began his shift at midday. The Little Neva here separated Petrovski Island from Kristovski Island. Kyzmin had to trudge across the long, wide bridge every hour.11 It was covered in thick snow and any trace of recent crime would be visible. At about one o’clock, he was completing his usual round under a lowering grey sky in a temperature a couple of degrees below zero when some passing workmen told him that further back there was blood on the bridge, its barrier and its support, and a shoe lay on the ice below. He went to check and found that they were right. He hadn’t noticed this before. He went to fetch a policeman, who, having checked, also found that they were right, and went to fetch an inspector, Asonov. They all came back and the inspector took measurements, made notes, and induced Kyzmin to fish about with a boat-hook and retrieve ‘a man’s galosh and a worn brown shoe, Size 10, manufactured by Treygolnik’.
Not wanting to stir up trouble, Inspector Asonov put in a report early in the afternoon.
The search of the water space opposite the location mentioned in the statement, where the ice had not yet covered the water and pools of water had formed, was conducted and did not reveal anything suspicious. Removed galosh and shoe were handed to the guard Fedor Kyzmin until further instructions are given.12
However, there were no divers in the Gendarmerie; the River Police had to provide those, and the system was slow to crank into action. It seems unlikely that any divers inspected the Petrovski Bridge on Saturday. Nobody came to ask Kyzmin, in his hut, about any shoe, or galosh, that had been found.
At last, at lunchtime Yusupov telephoned the apartment on Gorokhovaya Street and asked to speak to Mounya Golovina. She took the phone and – aware that the Okhrana were listening – spoke in English. She looked agitated. Shortly afterwards she left, telling Maria that she would be back but that she must speak to Yusupov alone, at the home she shared with her mother on the Moika. Maria and the others noticed that she seemed agitated. And when Mounya got home it is possible that, before he arrived, Anna Vyrubova called to tell her what the Okhrana suspected about Yusupov’s involvement, because according to him Mounya:
…rushed up and said in a stifled voice: ‘What have you done with him? They say he was murdered at your house and that it was you who killed him.’13
Yusupov tried to reassure her. He told her that policemen had been crawling all over the place this morning – he had held a small house-warming party last night and things had got rather out of hand; his closest friend Dmitri, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, had shot one of the yard dogs by accident. There had been a great fuss – there was a police station just across the canal beside the Ministry of the Interior, so of course they had heard the gun – and then Purishkevich had said something stupid to a policeman about shooting Rasputin, and at the crack of dawn a couple of examining magistrates had turned up asking about Rasputin and looking at the dog’s bloodstains in the snow in the yard. But Rasputin hadn’t been near the place! As it happened he’d rung up in the middle of the housewarming to ask Yusupov to make up a party and come out to the gypsies, but Yusupov had made his excuses because he’d got guests. He’d actually gone back into the dinner party and told them all what Rasputin had said. Anyway, he had been badly shaken by the examining magistrates and then this morning, at his father-in-law’s place where he was trying to get some sleep, he was woken up by a policeman called Grigoriev and had to go through the whole thing again. He had fully explained the situation. It was all cleared up now.