Private Investigations

by Victoria Zackheim

  CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT MYSTERY?

  – Tasha Alexander –

  PEOPLE FREQUENTLY ASK ME WHY SO MANY READERS ARE drawn to crime fiction. On the surface the answer is simple: few things provide more satisfaction than a well-solved mystery, whether in life or in fiction. Something in the human brain compels us to look for connections, solutions, and larger meaning. This comes as no shock. The emotional payoff is gratifying, and it’s easy to accept that we long for explanations and order in a world that is often overwhelming. But is the answer what we crave? Thinking about my own relationship with mystery, I’d have to say no.

  Ancient mythology gives us the tale of the Gordian knot. Sometime in the late eighth century BCE, the citizens of Phrygia, mired in civil war, learned from an oracle in Telmissus that their next king would enter the capital city driving an oxcart. Soon thereafter, a peasant called Gordius arrived in just such a vehicle. Why keep fighting when fate has solved your problem? The citizens hailed him as their new ruler, and Gordius tied up his cart, using a knot so intricate and complicated that everyone believed it impossible to untie.

  Fortunately, another oracle stepped in to clear things up. The knot could be undone, but only by a man who would rule all of Asia.

  Fast-forward to 333 BCE. Gordius’s cart—knot still intact—has long been housed in the Temple of Jupiter in the city named Gordium, after the ancient king. The unstoppable young Macedonian, Alexander the Great, is making his way across the continent, conquering everything in sight. He seizes Gordium and heads for the temple, eager to get his hands on the knot. A student of Aristotle, Alexander has a well-trained mind and quickly realizes that he cannot figure out how to untie the rope. Undaunted, he pulls out his sword and hacks through it. Onward to the rest of Asia!

  We see a similar scene play out in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Archaeologist Indiana Jones faces a scimitar-wielding swordsman on the streets of Cairo. Indy reaches for his whip, and the audience is ready for a drawn-out fight. Then, looking drained and exhausted, he instead pulls out a revolver and brings the challenge to a quick—and utterly satisfying—conclusion.

  This satisfaction comes partly from our expectations being upended and partly from the wit lacing the story. Regardless of the punch of delight, neither Indy’s gun nor Alexander’s sword burrows into our minds and demands further thought.

  As much as I appreciate irrefutable truth and elegant answers to questions, the search for them can be far more fulfilling than the end goal. Novelist Ken Kesey said, “The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer,” and I think he’s right. If he weren’t, why is it that sometimes, even when we learn the truth, we have difficulty accepting it? Is it because we object to the answer, maybe because it’s not what we want to hear, or do we have a tendency to prefer a good story to a concrete fact?

  We return again and again to mysteries that seem unsolvable. Will we ever really know who killed JFK? What is the government hiding about Area 51 in Roswell? Surely Princess Diana didn’t die in a simple automobile accident? There is no denying the perennial appeal of conspiracy theories. We want solutions, but only when they satisfy our desire for justice and, perhaps more importantly, for meaning. Alongside that, we want a good story. I certainly do.

  The staggering reaction to Princess Diana’s death came as a shock to many, particularly the British royal family. In the months and years following the car crash that killed her, people began to speculate that it wasn’t an accident at all. No one could deny the tension between her and her ex-in-laws. Few denied that the royal family had treated her shabbily, and many suspected that her popularity, even after her divorce from the Prince of Wales, could prove a threat to the monarchy. So wouldn’t it be reasonable to suspect that the House of Windsor had ordered a hit on the inconvenient princess?

  Not really. We’re long past the days of medieval intrigue, and it isn’t credible to believe Diana would ever have set up a rival court. Nonetheless, rumors flew that MI6 was behind the crash, that Prince Charles wouldn’t be allowed to remarry unless Diana was dead, that the princess was pregnant (she wasn’t). The results of the investigation into the accident proved that the cause of the tragedy was far more mundane: the car’s driver was intoxicated.

  An emotionally unsatisfying explanation. We want someone like Diana to have died for a bigger reason and yearn for a convoluted, serpentine explanation that gives us heroes and villains. Once again, fact is rejected in favor of an ongoing mystery.

  Perhaps this need dates back to the days of early humans, when survival often meant fleeing when it felt like the right thing to do, even if everyone else stayed in camp because they didn’t see or hear a predator. Sometimes paying heed to that prickling feeling on the back of your neck is a good decision.

  This might explain primitive humans’ reliance on their instinct, but I think it goes deeper than that for those of us who dwell in the modern world. The unknown can be daunting and scary, but it can also be endlessly diverting. We might not have to depend frequently on instinct to survive, but we get pleasure out of trusting innate impulse and giving precedence to intuition over fact.

  A mystery gives us the opportunity to delve into delicious theories, to let our minds wander in all kinds of intriguing directions in search of answers, and to fill hours upon hours with discussion about the possibilities. It provides a reprieve from our mundane daily lives. Even when I know the solution to a mystery—whether it’s in the form of a much-loved book or a historical event—I glean enormous pleasure from revisiting the story. I notice new clues, pick up on references previously missed, come to feel closer to the characters involved.

  When I first started writing fiction, I did not set out to pen a mystery. My only goal was to draft a book that I would like to read. I figured that entertaining myself (and, perhaps, my mother, who would be more or less obligated to take a positive view of my work) was the only sure thing I could achieve in undertaking such a task. In the end, it turned out to be a mystery. I did, in fact, have a dead body in the book, but my agent and editor had numerous discussions about how it should be categorized. In the end, they went with A Novel of Suspense. Later, as I continued to write the series, they became Lady Emily Mysteries, and later still, each volume was A Novel until we circled back around to calling them mysteries. Nothing changed except the marketing strategy. Regardless of the label, each of the books included a mystery in the classic sense: a murder that my protagonist must solve. But I’d argue that nearly all fiction deals with mystery, just not always the sort that revolves around murders and crime. Those are not, after all, the only kinds that exist. The Oxford English Dictionary defines mystery as a hidden or secret thing; something inexplicable or beyond human comprehension; a person or thing evoking awe or wonder but not well known or understood; an enigma. (It is also, according to the eighteenth meaning of the noun in nontheological use, a kind of plum cake. Sadly, now obsolete and rare.)

  Our fascination with mystery is closely tied to our natural curiosity: The desire or inclination to know or learn about anything, especially what is novel or strange; a feeling of interest leading one to inquire about anything (again, from the Oxford English Dictionary). We cannot resist learning about those hidden and secret things. Questions—which, in themselves, can be a form of mysteries—entice us, motivate us, and, when it comes to books, keep us reading.

  In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, we wonder whether the Bennets will be ruined by their Lydia’s profligate behavior. Will Lizzie marry Darcy? Will her family ruin Jane’s chances with Bingley? Perhaps the biggest question of all in the novel is how anyone could agree to marry a man as loathsome as Mr. Collins. Homer’s Iliad makes us desperate to know whether Achilles will ever stop pouting and come out of his tent. And, regardless of one’s interest—or lack thereof—in whaling, the reader of Moby Dick is consumed with a keen desire to see whether Ahab gets the better of that great white beast.

  Even nonfiction appeals to our yearning for the mysteriou
s. Facts can be presented in a way that draws us in as fiction does, weaving stories more fantastical than we might accept in a novel. The truth is explained, whether the author is illuminating historical events or uncovering answers to a long-unsolved crime. Consider the myriad volumes that attempt to figure out the identity of Jack the Ripper. We still don’t have the answer, but there seems to be a collective insatiable desire to continue exploring the question.

  Mystery requires a search for answers. When we’re not dealing with fiction, there’s a very real chance of finding out exactly what happened and the motivation behind it all. We can discover the truth. But that very search opens up endless possibilities—possibilities our imaginations are all too ready to fill with details.

  One of the enduring mysteries of the twentieth century stems from the saga of the ill-fated last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family. Facing riots and losing the support of the army, Nicholas abdicated his throne in March 1917, and he, along with his wife and five children, then spent over a year in custody at various locations. Their final prison was Ipatiev House—the House of Special Purpose—in Yekaterinburg, and here, in July 1918, a Bolshevik firing squad executed them.

  That wasn’t the end of the story. First, the Bolsheviks announced that Nicholas was dead but let the public believe the rest of the family was still in custody, very much alive. Rumors began to fly almost immediately, but the one that caught the collective imagination was that of a young woman who called herself Anna Anderson and claimed to be Nicholas’s youngest daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

  Naturally, controversy followed.

  Surviving members of the Romanov family denied that she was Anastasia. A German girl identified her as her former roommate, Franziska Schanzkowska, a worker from Poland. But Anderson had many supporters as well, including Gleb Botkin, son of the tsar’s personal physician. Botkin knew the family well and had played with the tsar’s children. Although she was never legally recognized as Anastasia Romanov, Anderson clung to her claim until her death in 1984.

  Her story fascinated the world. People wanted to believe she was Anastasia, that she had defied the odds and somehow managed to survive the bloodbath in Yekaterinburg. In 1991, the Russians exhumed a shallow grave that contained the remains of five members of the royal family, and more than a decade later, archaeologists found the two remaining bodies at a site nearby. There was every reason to believe the entire family had been located. But, still, many people refused to believe the evidence. Even exhaustive—and conclusive—DNA testing has not silenced those who are convinced that Anastasia escaped a grisly fate. Countless people continue to cling to the mystery in the face of incontrovertible facts.

  Maybe, one could argue, when the Romanovs faced their firing squad, Anastasia wasn’t killed by the first round of bullets because they ricocheted off the diamonds sewn into her corset (we know this to be a real possibility). Maybe no one noticed she was still breathing—ever so slightly—when they dragged the bodies out of the bloody room. In fact, the evidence for someone surviving is stronger than that. According to the executioners, not one but two of the girls were still alive after the massacre, moaning and finding it difficult to breathe. They reported that both of them were quickly dispatched, stabbed to death. But we know something else: that the men who wrote the report were drunk at the time of the executions. Evidently, they weren’t eager to get on with their assigned task and decided intoxication would make it more bearable. Further, the grand duchesses were lovely, appealing girls.

  Does the latter matter? Of course it does. Maria, two years older than Anastasia, had earlier become romantically involved with one of the family’s guards, and he and some of his cohort considered helping the young ladies escape. Instead, their scheme was exposed, and new, less sympathetic men were sent to replace them.

  But how do we know they were less sympathetic? Although the Bolsheviks would have liked everyone in Russia to despise the Romanovs, it’s not so easy to eradicate the effect of centuries of tradition that had soaked into the people’s bones, telling them the tsar was their little father. And even if Nicholas and his wife were reviled autocrats, were their young, beautiful daughters, who were never to have ruled the country, so awful?

  Contemporary accounts tell us that those who interacted with the family in captivity found themselves surprised by the humanity of the Romanovs. They were no longer living in aristocratic luxury but more like ordinary people. Is it so difficult to imagine that even one of the executioners felt a tug of remorse when he noticed that two of the girls were still alive? In the midst of the gruesome scene, would it have been impossible for him to hide the condition of one of them, perhaps the girl he was charged with putting into a waiting truck? Couldn’t he have pretended she was dead and placed her under the other bodies? And then, when they drove into the forest, what if he didn’t throw her down the mine shaft that would become a makeshift grave?

  Or maybe it’s a better story if our conscience-stricken guard doesn’t notice any sign of life until he’s at the mine shaft, lifting what he thinks is a lifeless body out of the truck. What if Anastasia moves, just a bit, when he picks her up? And what if, in the confusion of the scene—we know it was several days before all the corpses were dealt with and that they weren’t all to be buried in the same place—he manages to remove her, taking her somewhere safe, where he—or someone more qualified—can tend to her injuries and nurse her back to health?

  Anna Anderson wound up in Germany, where she attempted suicide, explaining later that she had done so because she was afraid that her relatives wouldn’t recognize her.

  To be fair, she was right about the Romanovs. They didn’t accept her. Her physical appearance would have changed in the years between that awful night in Yekaterinburg and the moment that the family first responded to her claims. Surely, they would have recognized something about her, even if she looked different. She would remember things that only Anastasia could. Or would she? The grievous injuries she had suffered might have caused memory loss, and the trauma of the experience had profound effects on her. Anderson could understand Russian but refused to speak it because it had been spoken by her would-be executioners. Regardless of what she did or didn’t know, the family rejected her. Why?

  Maybe, when they met her, it was obvious in an instant that she was not Anastasia. Even if you go years without seeing someone, you’re likely to recognize the person when facing her. If her appearance has changed significantly, you might need to be reminded of her name, but once you hear it, you’ll realize it’s she. Something in your consciousness clicks, and that’s that. However, if the person standing before you isn’t who she claims, you’ll know at once.

  But do we really want to believe that’s how the story of this poor woman—locked up in a mental institution (for that was where Anna Anderson first surfaced), scarred physically and emotionally (it can’t be denied that her body was horribly scarred), with no family or friends—ends? We have to accept that the Romanovs refused to acknowledge her, but we can look for a more gratifying explanation for their actions.

  Were they consumed with guilt for having done nothing to get Anastasia and her siblings out of Russia? Was it unbearable to learn about the horror they had left her to face? Or was her sudden appearance a threat to them inheriting the fortune that Nicholas II had placed in a bank in Germany, still waiting to be claimed by his heirs? Money motivates people to do all sorts of awful things.

  Anna Anderson’s story, if it were true, would be heartbreaking, but DNA tells us it isn’t. At best, she suffered from severe mental illness, rejected her true identity, and believed she was Anastasia Romanov. At worst, she was a calculating psychopath, cunningly trying to exploit a grieving family. The DNA proves two things: first, that she wasn’t related to the Romanovs and second, that she was related to the family of Franziska Schanzkowska. Remember that woman in Berlin who claimed Anderson was her roommate, Franziska Schanzkowska?

  Even if one were inclined to re
ject the DNA evidence about the Romanovs—and there are plenty of people who do just that—isn’t it a bit much to believe that by some coincidence, this German woman happened to come up with the name of a roommate whose family DNA does match Anderson’s?

  Of course not. Because if someone is ready to go down the road of denying DNA, there’s no limit to where that might lead.

  And it’s complicated. Did the Russian government, after the fall of the Soviet Union, really want it to get out that the tsar’s daughter had survived? And who trusts old DNA anyway? Doesn’t it decay? Science is wrong (unfortunately, in our current climate, there are far too many people who believe this). Prince Philip, a maternal relative of the tsar’s children, allowed a sample of his DNA to be used for comparison. Are we supposed to believe that he would allow it to be known that Anastasia had survived when the British royal family—his family—hadn’t lifted a finger to save her? Furthermore, there’s the matter of the Russian Orthodox Church, which canonized the Romanovs and named them martyrs. Saints’ bodies are relics, and there are rules about how those bodies are handled. For example, they can’t be buried in an ordinary funeral.

  After the DNA testing, the bodies of Nicholas, Alexandra, and three of their children were interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. But now that they’re saints, the church is in an awkward position. If it officially recognizes the bodies as the Romanovs, then it has allowed the remains to be handled in a wholly inappropriate fashion. So, instead, it has decided to only sort of accept the recognition and ordered new DNA tests, the results of which have not been made public.

  Which means the controversy isn’t over. And, you may have noticed, only three of the five children received burial. Per the DNA, Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia (sorry, Anna Anderson), are at rest in the cathedral, but the spaces left for Alexei (Nicholas’s only son) and Maria are empty, their bones still in storage.