Felix shuddered. ‘You have no idea, Misha, mon ami. Dmitri, Sukhotin and Purishkevich were in another room, ready to come and dispose of him when poisoned cakes had done their business. I was alone with him – Rasputin thought we were waiting for Irina to join us. He ate enough cyanide-filled cakes, washed down with poisoned wine, to fell a regiment and the only effect they had was that he asked me if I would sing for him! In desperation, I did the only think I could think of doing. I made an excuse to leave the room, snatched Dmitri’s army revolver from him, sprinted back and shot Rasputin. He fell, foaming at the mouth, but still the Satan didn’t die. I have never been more terrified in all my life and then . . . Oh God, Misha – he came after me like a wild animal on his hands and knees!’

Felix broke off and, with a shaking hand, lit a cigarette.

‘Having heard the gunshot, the others rushed into the room; and, after the cyanide-filled cakes, the poisoned wine and being shot, the Fiend got to his feet and began running out of the palace. It was incredible! Unbelievable! We chased him across the courtyard, shooting as we ran, until finally he fell into the snow, and even then . . . even then as we bound him with rope and rolled him up in a rug, an eyelid twitched.’

There was nothing faked about the horror Felix was remembering.

‘Then we hoisted him into the boot of a car, drove him to the north of the city, dug a hole in the ice beneath the Krestovsky Bridge and dropped him through it. We figured that, with all the ice and snow, he wouldn’t surface for months, but in the dark we didn’t notice that in between dragging him from the car and dropping him into the water one of his boots had fallen off. If it hadn’t been for that being recognized, Rasputin would still be at the bottom of the Malaya Nevka River.’

In the days that followed, Alicky didn’t leave her mauve boudoir. She was too overcome with grief at the murder of her beloved friend, and with terror at the thought of what would happen the next time Alexei had an uncontrollable bleed. It was Nicky who dealt with the family – or who tried to deal with them, for although no one made too much hue and cry when Felix departed for Kursk, they were united in their indignation over Dmitri being sent to the Persian front.

‘It’s a death sentence!’ his father said, no longer the suave and sophisticated Paul they were all familiar with, but a man heartbroken and despairing. ‘How can Nicky do this to him?’