by Nick Marsh
[33] From Colonel Goodenough’s personal notes – ‘Don’t trust this Milos chappie. Met a few like him before. Says he’s a respectable arms dealer, but he’s only one step up from a gun-runner, I’ll bet, and foreign to boot. Still, he genuinely seems to have known Moretti, so we shall see.’
[34] Extract from Violet’s Diary – ‘Auntie was on her usual form tonight, subtle as a sock with a brick in it. Poor Milos probably had an easier time being interrogated by Russian soldiers during the war, and every time he spoke Auntie gave Grace a knowing grin and a wink, until I thought she would die of embarrassment (Grace, I mean, not Auntie. I don’t think there’s enough shame in the world to finish her off).
[35] Despite extensive searching and referencing, we have been unable to find any historical evidence of connections between Professor Moretti and Milos Valinchek. This is possibly due to the clandestine nature of their dealings.
[36] This page of the diary ends abruptly.
[37] Some sources suggest that a young Captain Goodenough had trouble with mutinous troops himself in the Boer War, though the outcome of this is unclear.
[38] Mrs Sunderland is referred to by some sources as ‘the silver fox’, at least partially because of her surprising skills in the field of lock picking.
[39] No reference to the death or burial site of Conte Alvise de Gremanci can be found by any of our researchers.
[40] Once a Venetian noble’s home, the palace and courtyard was taken over by Austrian invaders, and from there passed into the hands of the Venetian civic authorities.
[41] Very probably a representation of the Venetian Lion, the symbol of Venice, and a Turkish warrior. Turks were the ancient foes of Venice.
[42] Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German historian and archaeologist, writer of the History of Ancient Art (1764) – see the archives for a translated copy. He was passionate about the art of the Ancient Greeks, and how this was tied in with the history of their culture. His works influenced the theories and thoughts of generations of art historians.
He was murdered in his bed in Trieste in 1764, by fellow traveller Francesco Archangeli, for a quantity of gold medals in Winckelmann’s possession. Archangeli said afterwards he had thought him only ‘un uomo di poco conto’ (“a man of little account”)’.
[43] The caves at Postumia (Postojna in Slavic) were created by the Pivka River eroding through soft limestone. The cave complex is vast, and over five kilometres of passageways were opened to the public in 1819. The caverns were fitted with electric lighting in 1884 – one of the first tourist attractions in the world to boast such a feature.
[44] Probably the Silver War Badge, issued by the British War Office after the Great War for service personnel who had been honourably discharged due to wounds or infirmity.
[45] The Kingdom of Bulgaria, as it was known during the Great War, participated on the side of the Central Powers (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire).
[46] Milos himself never writes about the gun directly, but from the context and description it seems most likely to have been an MP18 (Maschinenpistole), manufactured towards the end of the Great War.
[47] Though most westerners still refer to the great city on the Bosphorus as Constantinople, its inhabitants have for many years referred to it as Istanbul – likely derived from the Greek ‘Is tim bolin’, meaning ‘In the city’. In 1930, the Turkish postal service stopped delivering mail addressed to Constantinople, driving the name to be known worldwide as Istanbul.
Milos uses both the western and eastern names for the city in his diaries, depending upon whom he is doing business with.
[48] Milos never directly describes the encounter with Fenalik or the death of Violet in his diaries. It seems the experience disturbed him deeply.
[49] Almost certainly a euphemism for ‘bribed’.
[50] The Bosphorus, a strait between The Sea of Mamara and the Black Sea, divides Constantinople in two. The Golden Horn is an inlet of the Bosphorus, forming a natural harbour and further dividing the city. Stamboul is the southernmost province.
[51] Iris Davenport, Violet’s sister.
[52] Part of the Topkapi Palace complex, built for the sultans in the fifteenth century, and used until they wearied of it and moved to a more private location in the 1800s.
[53] Captain Neville Goodenough, Col. Goodenough’s third grandson.
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