He and his wife and two sons were already installed in their private carriage and the train was ready to leave Petrograd’s Warsaw Station that evening on its long journey across the snowy wastes of Russia and Ukraine. His wife was a qualified nurse and his sons would act as orderlies. Purishkevich would support them and was sincere in his wish to assist. There was no doubt that his humanitarian efforts were valuable, albeit probably funded, at least, by the sinister Black Hundreds, a pro-German secret society of Russian autocrats. Purishkevich is said to have been ‘a major conduit’ for finance to this and other similar organisations for years; they paid for pogroms against the Jewish population.17
Purishkevich had slept in his clothes, spent the morning of Saturday 17 December conducting guests around his train, and in the afternoon had run errands and paid visits. He had arranged the train’s departure and was about to take a final meal before leaving when Sukhotin arrived to drag him off to the Sergei Palace for the final conspiratorial debriefing. He later recalled that:
At the palace I found both my host and Yusupov. They were both extremely agitated, and were drinking cup after cup of black coffee with brandy. They declared that they had not slept at all last night, and could not have had a more disturbing day, for the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna [the Tsarina] had already been informed of the disappearance and even the death of Rasputin and had named us as his murderers.18
All the conspirators contributed to Yusupov’s letter. Unctuous deference and injured innocence were laid on with a trowel…
Your Imperial Majesty,
I hasten to obey the commands of Your Majesty and to report what occurred in my house last night…
I had arranged a little supper as a house-warming in my new quarters and invited my friends, a few ladies and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. About midnight I was rung up by Grigori Yefimovich, who invited me to go with him and see the gypsies. I declined, giving as my excuse the party in my own house, and I asked him where he was speaking from, for a great many voices could be heard coming over the wire. But he answered ‘You want to know too much’ and with that he rang off. That is all I heard from Grigori Yefimovich during the night…
About three o’clock most of my guests took their departure, and after I had said good-bye to the Grand Duke and two ladies I retired with the others to my study.19
It was a masterly picture. Behold the considerate host, enjoying a final nightcap with his guests before a roaring fire.
Suddenly I had the impression that a shot had been fired close by. I called my man and ordered him to see what had happened. He came back almost at once with the report that a shot had been heard, but no-one knew where it had come from…
There was a good deal more along similar lines. The Tsarina does not seem to have been convinced.
Yusupov was going to leave that Saturday evening to join his wife, who was unwell, and their child in the Crimea and spend the Christmas holiday. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a serving officer, was due to return to the Tsar’s headquarters, the Stavka, on Sunday.
Today, Saturday, was 17 December in Petrograd, where the old Julian calendar was still in use. In Western Europe and North America it was 30 December. So for thirty-six-year-old newcomer Sir Samuel Hoare, Head of the British Intelligence Mission in Petrograd,20 it was the last working day of 1916. Tomorrow he and his wife would celebrate New Year’s Eve quietly. They were not yet so well integrated in the Petrograd social scene as some other officers of the Mission. A fair-haired, openfaced fellow, on this Saturday afternoon he was at the Restriction of Enemy Supplies Committee meeting – a Duma committee meeting which was taking place despite the sudden prorogation of the Duma the previous day. The point under discussion was how to keep goods from the Central Powers – Germany, Turkey, and Italy – out of Russia.
The meeting dragged on with the usual Russian disregard for time. Hoare remembered that:
Several times during the sitting individual members left the room and returned with whispered messages to their neighbours. At the time I paid no attention to these interruptions of business. When the Committee broke up, I went with the Chairman and the Secretary to another room for the purpose of discussing various points connected with the publication of the Russian Black List. Before we could go far with our discussion, a well-known official of the Ministry of Commerce entered with the news that Rasputin had been murdered that morning by the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Yusupov. Professor Struve, Chairman of the Committee, at once sent out for an evening paper. In a few minutes the Bourse Gazette was brought in with the news actually published in it. The Bourse Gazette is always a paper of headlines. In this case the first heavy type was devoted to the peace proposals, the second to the fighting in Romania. Then came a headline: Death Of Grigori Rasputin In Petrograd. In the body of the paper there was little more than a single line and that on the second page. The announcement ran as follows: At six o’clock this morning Grigori Rasputin Novich died after a party in one of the most aristocratic houses in the centre of Petrograd.
To one who has only been in Russia a few months the news was almost overwhelming. To Russian public men like Professor Struve, a man whose name has for a generation been in the forefront of Russian political and economic life, the news seemed almost incredible. As I had no wish to appear to meddle in Russian internal affairs, I did not attempt to discuss the situation; nor needless to say could our prosaic conversation about the Black List continue.21
‘I did not attempt to discuss the situation’. A strange remark for the head of the British Intelligence Mission to make; but then spying, at its untrustworthy end, was not Hoare’s speciality.
The following Sunday morning he set about drafting a report for despatch to London. By then he had ‘been in touch with various people representing different classes and sections of opinion’ and concluded that Yusupov had held ‘a ball’ on the Friday night which was attended by several Grand Dukes. He had heard more than one version of what happened but ‘the generally accepted story is that he was shot as he was leaving the house in a motor. The motor is supposed to have taken the body to the Islands where it was thrown into the sea or one of the rivers.’
Hoare felt confident enough to write all this down on Sunday and send it, amended, on Monday. But others in the British military and diplomatic community had heard about Rasputin’s disappearance even before the Saturday evening paper appeared.22 Many members of the British Intelligence Mission occupied rooms at the Hotel Astoria, opposite St Isaac’s Cathedral, more or less permanently, and nothing is known of what they had heard or whether, indeed, they spent Saturday sleeping off an eventful Friday night. But the Hon. Albert Stopford, a businessman and diplomat, a frequent visitor from England who was particularly well connected and always stayed at the Hotel d’Europe on the Nevski, had certainly been royally entertained on the night of Friday 16 December, so the next day,
about 5p.m. was asleep when Seymour came. A friend in the police whom he met in the street told him Rasputin had been shot three times by Felix Yusupov. He did not know if Rasputin was dead. I telephoned to the Embassy but Lady Georgina was out. She rang me up at 5.40 [p.m.] to say she had just heard the report…. In the hotel the rumour was generally known by 7.15 [p.m.].23