Mounya was not quite so sure.
‘It’s all too horrible,’ she said. ‘The Empress and Anna [Vyrubova] are convinced that you murdered him last night at your house.’
‘Will you telephone to Tsarskoye Selo and ask if the Empress will receive me? I’ll explain the whole thing to her, but be quick.’
[Mounya] telephoned to Tsarskoye Selo and was told that Her Majesty was expecting me. As I was leaving, she took me by the arm: ‘Don’t go to Tsarskoye Selo, I beseech you,’ she said. ‘Something dreadful will happen to you if you do; they’ll never believe you are innocent…’14
Yusupov was spared ‘something dreadful’ when Anna Vyrubova rang and said the Tsarina had collapsed in a faint, and didn’t want Yusupov to come to the Alexander Palace but demanded that he write down what had happened. He promised to do so and left.
Later that afternoon Mounya returned to Rasputin’s apartment with her mother, hoping that Yusupov was telling the truth. He would probably figure in a list of suspects, if the police were making a list of people bearing a grudge against Rasputin. On the other hand, a list like that would be very long indeed. And back in the apartment that evening they were thinking exactly that, and were beginning to fear the worst, and Mounya and her mother had begun to cry a little when they heard a loud knock at the door.
The visitors wore uniform. General Popov and Lt-Col. Popel of the Detached Gendarme Corps explained that they were there to conduct certain enquiries on behalf of the Ministry of the Interior.
Popov had already spoken to Yusupov’s batman Ivan Nefedev at the Yusupov Palace, and had realised that he was going to get precious little change out of any of the servants there. According to Nefedev, on the night of Friday 16 December,
I did not hear any gunshots either in the dining room or outside in the streets. About 4.00a.m. I heard the bell and entered the Prince’s study. The guests were already gone. The Prince told me to go outside to the yard and have a look at what had happened there. I went out through the side entrance to the yard of house number 92, however, by that time there was nobody there and I did not notice anything unusual. I reported this to the Prince. He rung the bell again a few minutes later and ordered me to have a look in the yard again because there was a dead dog. I went through the side door to the yard of house number 92 and this time noticed a dog lying by the fence… the dead dog was a mongrel which used to live in the Yusupov’s house. I have nothing more to say on the matter.
Mounya Golovina was interviewed on the Saturday. The rest had to wait until the following morning, which was fortunate for the investigators, as the women’s attitude to the police would change overnight. That evening, however, Mounya told Popov that, on Friday 16 December,
I arrived at Grigori Efimovich Rasputin’s apartment at around 12 noon and stayed there until 10.00p.m. On the night of that day Grigori Efimovich was not going to go anywhere, although in the morning while slightly excited he said that, ‘I’m going to go out tonight’, but he did not say where to. When I asked him to let me know if he would go, he responded that he would not tell me. I told him I would sense it anyway. Grigori Efimovich then said, ‘you would sense but you would not find me’. We had this conversation as a joke therefore I did not attach any importance to it. I went home around 10.00p.m. Grigori Efimovich used to call his male visitors ‘dear’. I used to call Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov ‘the little one’… Prince Yusupov was first introduced to Rasputin about five years ago at my apartment, later they met once or twice again at our apartment. This year, 1916, Prince Yusupov saw Rasputin at our apartment, and according to the Prince, Rasputin made a better impression on him than in previous years. The Prince complained of chest pains and I advised him to visit Rasputin’s apartment. Prince Yusupov visited Rasputin with me twice in late November and at the beginning of December 1916 – he stayed less than an hour at Rasputin’s apartment on both occasions. Once Rasputin asked Prince Yusupov to take him to the gypsies. That is why when on the morning of [Saturday] 17th December Rasputin’s daughters told me on the telephone that Grigori Efimovich left the night before with ‘the little one’, meaning Prince Yusupov, I reassured them saying that there was nothing to worry about. I assumed that perhaps they went to the gypsies, he even wanted to pre-warn the place they were going to visit. On the afternoon of 17th December Prince Yusupov visited me and told me that Grigori Efimovich telephoned him on the night of [Friday] 16th December and suggested visiting the gypsies. However, the Prince told Rasputin that he had guests and could not go that evening. When Prince Yusupov returned to his guests after that telephone conversation he told them: ‘do you know who called me? Rasputin suggested we visit the gypsies together’. As Prince Yusupov stated, he did not see Rasputin during the evening and night of 16th December.15
In fact, Yusupov had spent a busy morning firefighting – dashing from point to point in his chauffeured car. He knew Rasputin was dead; he had been intimately involved in arranging his murder. Now he set about covering his tracks. He made a statement to the city’s Governor, Alexander Balk. Then he was whisked from the Prefecture back to the palace on the Moika to check for bloodstains in daylight, and directed the servants to clean up wherever he found anything incriminating, before racing over to Mounya Golovina’s to act the innocent. He left Mounya’s house, which was also on the Moika, in order to visit Dmitri Pavlovich at his own apartment in the Sergei Palace on the Nevski Prospekt.
Dmitri Pavlovich, a sallow man with moody Greek eyes, was a few years younger than Felix Yusupov. Over a late lunch he was able to reveal to Yusupov what exactly had happened early that morning after he and the other murderers drove off with Rasputin’s body, and roughly where it had been dumped. Lt Sergei Sukhotin, who had been with them throughout the previous night and had assisted in the murder, came in and was sent off to fetch Vladimir Purishkevich, the idea being that they would all get their stories in line. This was particularly important because Felix Yusupov now had to compose a letter to the Tsarina.
Purishkevich, whose loose talk had contributed so much to the mess they were in, was maintaining his usual high profile. He was an odd-looking character, bald with pebble glasses, and excitable. Having previously arranged for any member of the Duma who wished – there were about 400 of them – to visit his hospital train from nine o’clock in the morning onwards on Saturday 17 December, he had spent a busy morning showing parties around. Medical aid and expertise were carried to Russian soldiers at the front by around 300 private hospital trains like his; many rich individuals sponsored locomotives and staff and beautifully fitted carriages, but few regularly travelled with them as he did. He had made more than one trip to Romania in recent months, during the ignominious retreat in which Romanian and Russian troops had been beaten back by Germans. On his latest return, just six weeks before, he had personally reported to the Tsar at the Stavka on the situation in Rena, Braila and Galati. He had chosen this particular Saturday on which to depart once more on a mission of mercy.16