A consultation took place in the second-floor dining room. Grand Duke Dmitrii thought it best to let Rasputin go and try again some other time. But the others would not hear of it: Rasputin was not to be allowed to leave alive. Iusupov offered to shoot Rasputin. He borrowed Dmitrii’s revolver and returned to the ground floor, the weapon concealed behind his back. Rasputin looked thoroughly sick and was breathing heavily, but a sip of Madeira revived him and he suggested a visit to the gypsies—“with God in mind but mankind in the flesh.”119 Like many murderers, Iusupov had a dread of his victim’s eyes: being superstitious, he also feared that Rasputin could be as impervious to bullets as to poison. To ward off evil spirits, he invited Rasputin to inspect an elaborate seventeenth-century Italian crucifix made of rock crystal and silver which stood on a commode. As Rasputin bent over it and crossed himself, Iusupov fired into his side. With a wild scream, Rasputin fell to the floor.
The instant they heard the shot, the conspirators rushed down. They saw Iusupov bending over the body. In Iusupov’s recollection, Rasputin was dead, but Purishkevich recalled him writhing in agony and still breathing. Dmitrii, Dr. Lazavert, and the lieutenant departed in Purishkevich’s car to the Warsaw Railroad Terminal to dispose of Rasputin’s overcoat and rubber boots in the stove of his Red Cross train. Purishkevich and Iusupov, awaiting their return, relaxed in the study.
According to his memoirs, Iusupov was suddenly seized with an urge to see Rasputin’s body. Rasputin lay motionless, to all appearances dead. But on scrutinizing the victim’s face more closely, Iusupov noticed the left eye twitch and open, followed by the right: Rasputin stared at him with boundless hatred. As Iusupov watched in disbelief, frozen with fear, Rasputin struggled to his feet and seized him by the throat, screaming through foaming lips, “Felix, Felix!” Iusupov managed to tear himself away and run upstairs, where Purishkevich was enjoying a cigar. As Purishkevich recalled the scene:
Iusupov was literally faceless: his lovely large blue eyes were still larger and bulging. Half conscious, virtually oblivious of me, seemingly out of mind, he flung himself at the door leading to the main hall and ran to his parents’ apartment …120
Purishkevich seized his gun and rushed downstairs. Rasputin was gone. He found him in the garden, staggering through the snow toward the gate, bellowing, “Felix, Felix, I will tell everything to the Empress!” He fired at him but missed. He fired again and missed again. Rasputin was nearing the gate leading to the street. Steadying his arm, Purishkevich fired a third shot, which felled Rasputin. He shot him one more time and, bending over the lifeless body, kicked it in the temple.
A short time later a policeman who had been patrolling the neighborhood appeared and said that he had heard shots. Iusupov explained that a party had just broken up and some revelers had fired in the air. But as bad luck would have it, police officers at a nearby station at Moika 61 had also heard the sounds of shooting and soon more policemen appeared. Purishkevich, who never could control his tongue, blurted out: “We have killed Rasputin.”
The sight of Rasputin’s lifeless corpse in the snow drove Iusupov into a frenzy. He ran up to his study and brought out of the desk drawer the truncheon which Maklakov had given him. With it he beat the body like a man possessed, screaming, “Felix, Felix!” He then collapsed in a faint. On regaining consciousness, he ordered a servant to shoot one of the dogs to provide an alibi.
With the help of domestics, Rasputin’s body was tied and weighed down with iron chains. Loaded into Dmitrii’s car, it was driven to a remote and sparsely populated spot, the bridge linking Krestinskii and Petrovskii islands, and dumped into the Malaia Moika canal, along with his coat, which had not been destroyed because it was too large to fit into Purishkevich’s train stove. Dr. Lazavert, noting the victim’s rubber boots in the car, threw them into the canal, but he missed and one of them fell on the bridge, where its subsequent discovery led the police to Rasputin’s body.
