by Evelyn Weiss
Yuri laughs. “What will Rufus’s aristocratic English family think, Professor?”
“I can imagine some raised eyebrows from his father and brother at Breckland Court. But as the second son of the du Pavey family, he will not inherit the estate. And, with a daughter, he is perhaps less of an embarrassment to his family than as a forever single ‘confirmed bachelor’, as they euphemistically say in England.”
The professor smiles to himself. But he too, like Lord Buttermere, now wanders off along the deck, leaving Yuri and I together.
“So, Agnes, will you return to the States?”
“The war is over here, and it will be over in Europe too, in a few days. So, yes – I will go home. But what about you, Yuri?”
“Well – ” I feel him take my hand. “I’m rather hoping the United States Immigration Department may look favourably on a man who can ride horses and drive trucks. I just hope they will not suspect me as a Bolshevik spy, when I tell them I must write regular letters to my mother in Astrakhan. I think my skills would be useful in the western States – cattle ranching, perhaps?”
I realise that my face is beaming with joy, as he carries on.
“But if I am given my own free choice of where to live, Agnes, there is a particular place I have in mind. A small town, with a thriving, well-run corner drugstore, in rural Connecticut.”
I look up into Yuri’s face. The sky behind his tousled hair is dizzyingly blue, like a dream of Heaven. But I hear a polite cough – and the voice of Lord Buttermere, back from his walk around the deck.
“Yesterday, you were prisoners. Today, we are all on holiday. I suggest a picnic.”
“On the battleship?”
“The battleship will be anchoring in the harbor in a few minutes. We have permission to use one of the ship’s boats. So we can row out to the shore of the island of Lemnos. We even have a hamper of food for our picnic. A dinner was held on board last night for the ambassadors of Britain and Turkey. There are quite a lot of leftovers.”
An hour later, Yuri and Lord Buttermere row our boat ashore, amid gently rippling waves. This place is called Fanari. Between rocky headlands crowned with cypresses and olive groves, a perfect curve of sand is dazzlingly white. The water is crystal clear, pale where it shelves onto the beach, deepening to a cobalt-blue horizon. We unpack the wicker picnic hamper, and Lord Buttermere opens a bottle of champagne. We clink our glasses together, and call a toast “To Peace!” As Axelson sips his drink, he looks at Buttermere’s slim, slight figure.
“I did not think of you as a rower, Lord Buttermere!”
“When I was a student, I was cox of the Cambridge boat. We had three victories over Oxford; happy days. So I don’t usually row, but I know a little of the technique…”
I see another small boat among the waves, rowing towards us. It appears to have come, like us, from HMS Agamemnon, which I can see anchored in the distance.
The boat pulls up on the sand next to ours. Four men hold oars; I recognise the all-too familiar uniforms of Red Guards. But they remain seated. Out of the boat get three other people. I recognize the first straight away: it’s General Aristarkhov. Following him closely, and once again smartly dressed, is Mr Bukin.
But it’s the third figure to emerge from the boat that surprises me. It’s Emily.
I greet her warmly, and open my arms to give her a hug. She responds with a cool handshake and a thin smile. But I can’t help grinning at her.
“I’m so pleased to see you, Emily! Why on earth are you in Greece?”
There are introductions all round. But none of our party have any idea why these three people are here. Despite the warmth of the Aristarkhov’s and Bukin’s smiles, there’s an atmosphere, a kind of frost of suspicion, between our two groups. But when General Aristarkhov proffers his hand to me, I shake it politely. He explains Emily’s presence.
“Miss Neale is here as my personal assistant, as is Mr Bukin.”
“I’m surprised.”
“As you will recall, Miss Frocester, at the end of your stay at the Yermak Estate, Miss Neale was called aside, in private. She was given a letter from me, which asked her to explain her actions. For example, you yourself witnessed her causing the death of a man called Horobets – a former sergeant of the Siberian Cossack Host, who I knew to be an unstable and treacherous man.
Miss Neale travelled to St Petersburg to meet me. She explained to me all her actions and motives during the events of 1917. Her explanations were entirely satisfactory – so much so that I appointed her to work for me.”
I stare at her. “Emily, is this true? You’re a supporter of the Bolsheviks? Of Lenin?”
“Yes I am, Agnes. I have realized that there is only one way forward for Russia, and Lenin is the architect of our destiny. I admit that I was confused, groping for answers, when the revolution first happened –”
“Emily, you were one of the people who made the revolution happen!”
“I was involved in some street protests in February 1917. But those demonstrations weren’t organized or authorized by the Bolshevik Party. So they weren’t the true revolution. Only when the Bolsheviks swept away the so-called Provisional Government at the Winter Palace was there a real revolution.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this…”
“History proves, Agnes, that the revolution, the triumph of communism predicted by Marx, has come to fruition under Lenin’s leadership. It just took me a little time before I could see it that way. That was my own fault. Now, I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I’m here to help General Aristarkhov. He has an important mission here in Greece.”
Mr Bukin is standing by, waiting politely to shake my hand. “Miss Frocester! I am so grateful to you. I thank you with all my heart for the letter you wrote for me in Moscow, to the general. It took some time – but two weeks ago, he contacted me, saying he remembered my loyal and unquestioning service to him before the Revolution. He has now appointed me to be clerk of his new office in Moscow.”
“So why are you all here in Greece, Mr Bukin?”
“I don’t know. The general said it was important… Ah – Captain Sirko!”
Mr Bukin is thanking Yuri profusely for the money he gave him in Moscow. But I’m listening to another conversation. I overhear Aristarkhov talking to Lord Buttermere and the professor, both of whom reply to him, with one voice.
“That’s completely impossible! We cannot agree to your request.”
I look over at them. Lord Buttermere goes on. “We have no problem with Captain Sirko returning to Russia, if he wishes to. But as your prisoner, on a charge of murder!...”
I step over to them in a instant. “What on earth is going on?”
Aristarkhov looks at me. With an air of annoyance, he explains again.
“Our leader, Comrade Lenin, wants friendship between Russia and our near neighbour Sweden. He also wants to investigate and punish crime – even crimes that were committed before the Bolshevik government came to power. For both those reasons, I have come to arrest Captain Sirko, for the murder of Svea Håkansson in July 1916.”
I’m stunned. But Aristarkov continues. “Miss Frocester, I have already spoken to the captain of HMS Agamemnon, and to the senior British officials aboard the battleship. They are all rather busy today. They told me that if I needed to arrest a Russian citizen, for a crime that was committed in Russia, I should simply go ahead.”
I look at Aristarkhov, then at Bukin, then at Emily. My words come slowly.
“You want to investigate and punish crime, you say. So you need to find the murderer of Svea Håkansson. Captain Sirko is innocent. I can prove it, beyond any possible doubt.”
The General gives a short, low laugh. “How can you prove it?”
“Because I know who the real murderer is. And I have conclusive, irrefutable evidence.”
I look at the general, then at Emily, before carrying on. “The first piece of information I should share with you is one that you have both seen. I
t was there on the table inside a manilla file, General, when you interviewed me and Emily at the Winter Palace. It's a letter written by Prince Alexei, in the form of a diary.”
Emily looks at me. “Alexei’s letter doesn't say who killed Svea.”
“No. But it does go into very exact detail about something Alexei was given, while he was staying at Tri Tsarevny.”
Aristarkhov shrugs. “You mean the binoculars?”
“No. The books. Alexei was given books by his tutor, Nestor. One was the Time Machine. It’s a popular book of science fiction, written by the socialist H. G. Wells. It’s about a future world, in which human society has divided into two species: underground-dwelling workers and dreamy, idle aristocrats. Then there were two poems by Thomas Macauley, both about the struggles of the young Republic of Rome to defend itself against the claims of tyrant kings. The last book Alexei mentioned in his letter struck a particular chord with me, because the author was born in Litchfield and settled in Hartford – both in Connecticut, my home state. Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of my favorite books.”
Aristarkhov sneers. “This is hardly relevant – and rather tedious, Miss Frocester.” But I carry on.
“Can we conclude anything about the type of person who might give such books to an impressionable young boy? I could only guess, of course. But then I came across something more definite. Mr Bukin – you told me that Nestor is an Estonian surname.”
“Yes, it is.”
“And Professor, you thought that it might be a name from classical Greece. But when I was in Astrakhan, I met Yuri’s mother, Mrs Viktoriya Sirko. At her house I saw a newspaper clipping of a civic visit to Astrakhan from Boston, Massachusetts. As you may know, Boston is famous for its Irish population. One of the visitors was a Boston businessman named Patrick Casey Nestor.”
I look at Emily. “When the General sent you and I to Moscow, you told the American consulate that you'd lost your passport. But the truth is that you did still have your passport – but you didn't want to get it out in front of me, in case I saw the surname that was written in it. And today, you got the General Aristarkhov to introduce you as Emily Neale. But that’s a lie, isn’t it? Your name is actually Emily Nestor, of Irish descent, born in New Orleans. When I saw that newspaper article in Astrakhan, I realised, for the first time, that Nestor is an Irish surname.”
Emily says nothing.
“You have a brilliant academic record, Emily. You are one of the world’s most distinguished scholars of Russian literature. On that basis you secured a job as a private tutor to Alexei. I think his mother favored a female tutor for her delicate boy. And, the Tsarina’s extreme secretiveness meant that, although you were at Tri Tsarevny, you remained in the main Dacha every day. Only your name was known to you, General, and you, Mr Bukin. You never actually met Nestor, did you?”
The two Russians nod silently as I continue.
“But I think that one of you – probably you, General – had seen the distant figure of Tutor Nestor up at the main Dacha, from your own house down on the lake.”
“Good God! How did you know that?” Aristarkhov glares at me.
“Another of my guesses. What you saw – from a distance – was a black-haired, pale-skinned, thin woman, conservatively dressed in dark clothes. The weather was sunny, those few days at Tri Tsarevny in July 1916. In bright sunlight, you often don’t see people’s features. And if Emily was standing against the light, all you’d have seen was a silhouette, General. Look at me, now, against the sunlight –”
Aristarkhov looks at my shaded face and my figure, standing on the beach. My sharp shadow on the sand points at his feet. I go on.
“Three weeks later at Ivangorod, General, you were told that a person matching that description, an American woman, was at the harbor, getting into a boat to Tri Tsarevny. It was me, of course.
At the time, General, you were a loyal servant of the Tsar, and a senior member of Okhrana. You knew that the one person at Tri Tsarevny who had managed to remain a mystery to you was the dark-haired American woman, Tutor Nestor. So you suspected her – who was in fact me – of being the murderer of Svea Håkansson, and a threat generally to security and to the Tsar’s family.
In typically ruthless Okhrana manner, you asked the Cossack Ivan Horobets to dispose of me. You knew that Horobets was a brutal, unscrupulous man. That’s why you employed him to carry out Ohkrana’s nastier jobs. It was you who gave Kaspar Sepp a piece of drugged meat, and it was Horobets who set fire to the cottage.”
“You're accusing me of attempted murder, Miss Frocester.”
I turn away from the general, and look at Emily.
“First, let's finish your story, Emily. You took the position of tutor to Prince Alexei because you are a revolutionary socialist. You saw it as an opportunity to spy on the imperial family. You believed that would help the revolutionary movement in Russia. I think that you were in touch with Nikolay Chkheidze and other would-be revolutionaries before you even arrived in Russia. Once you were at Tri Tsarevny, you took the opportunity to send Chkheidze and his friends messages from a wireless that the revolutionaries gave you. You concealed it in the old storeroom, the house that was never used, on the island down on the lake. You were good at your little piece of espionage. You were spotted only once, by Rasputin, on one of his late-night forays along the causeway.
And finally, Emily, Alexei left one other clue that you are in fact Tutor Nestor. He drew a picture of you, at the end of his letter to Dr Jansens. I remember, at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, that you were very quick to say that the drawing was of Svea.”
Emily shrugs at me. “Why couldn’t the drawing have been Svea?”
“I think that Alexei couldn’t draw Svea. He didn’t want to go to that place in his mind. Whenever he thought of Svea, all he could think of was the horror he'd stumbled across on the porch of the Second Princess. No: that drawing is of you.”
Emily’s lower lip sticks out, like a little girl’s, as she looks at me.
“You’ve connected up a series of guesses – but you’re right, Agnes. I was tutor to Prince Alexei. I’m not ashamed of sending wireless messages to Chkheidze, or of trying to influence Alexei with those books. I was trying to educate him, to give him a new way of thinking. The Romanovs were tyrants.”
“And Lenin isn’t?”
She’s about to answer me, but I turn to Aristarkhov.
“General, you said I accused you of attempted murder. I’m not backing down on what I said. You did order Horobets to kill the professor and me in that cottage at Ivangorod. But then, when you saw Emily and I together at the Winter Palace, you realised how alike we looked, and that either of us might have been Tutor Nestor. You questioned us to try and find out the truth, but you couldn’t.
So you had us exiled to Siberia, and later you again instructed Horobets to eliminate us, at the Kungur ice caves. As with the burning of the cottage, you and Horobets took pains to make the intended deaths look like an accident.”
Aristarkhov snorts. “You can’t prove anything about me. Nor can you prove Captain Sirko innocent!” He turns on his heel, and signals to the four guards in the boat. They step down into the waves, and begin to walk across the sand towards us.
But I carry on talking. “You weren’t worried, General, about two American women disappearing in an apparent accident in an underground cave, because that would hardly draw the attention of the United States government. But when it came to actually putting someone on public trial for the murder of Svea Håkansson, you wanted to avoid any international effects.
You needed a Russian to take the blame. I think gangsters in New York use the phrase ‘fall guy’. An old-fashioned Cossack, loyal to the Tsarist regime, was ideal. But what made Yuri the perfect fall guy was that he actually was at Tri Tsarevny when the murder happened, and he knew how to handle guns.”
The four Russian guards are standing with us now, awaiting Aristarkhov’s signal. I see that all of them are armed with pistols. Yuri l
ooks at the circle of faces. “I hope for my sake you can prove this, Agnes! But are you saying that it was Emily that killed Svea? Or, General, did you murder her yourself?”
I reach for Yuri’s hand. “Please be patient. I need to take a break now. General Aristarkhov – will you give me just five minutes, before you take Yuri away?”
The general grunts. Axelson looks at me. “Miss Agnes! Why are you keeping us waiting? We need to know how you have solved this case!”
“There's something I have to do first. I need to talk to someone I trust.”
Both Yuri and the professor glance at me. But I answer their looks with a grin. “I don't mean either of you, on this occasion! What I mean is, that I need to talk to Lord Buttermere.”
Without any words, Lord Buttermere and I walk away from the group, along the edge of the waves. Gradually the sound of their voices dims and fades. All we can hear is the soft sound of the sea, as it washes across the sand with each incoming wave.
I pick up a stone, as if to throw it in the water. But instead I throw it behind me; it makes a little sound as it scuffs the sand.
“You know, Lord Buttermere, why I want to talk this business over with you? The politics around this case are very –”
“Delicate.”
“Yes. You’re an expert in all that political delicacy. But also – you know, don’t you? You know that when I stood in front of General Aristarkhov a minute ago, silhouetted in the sunshine, I wasn’t really talking about Emily.”
“Yes. I understand that.”
“Then I can tell you everything I know, Lord Buttermere. It started when I was in that room at Tri Tsarevny, in the main Dacha, where there was a picture on the wall of the fairytale Russian character, Ivan the Fool. The place wasn’t like a home, not even a rarely-used holiday home. There was nothing homely about it. It felt like a mausoleum, an empty shell.
I don’t think it had that atmosphere because the Romanovs had already departed. I think it felt like that before they ever arrived for their holiday. It always felt like that – because it had never been used, not even for their holidays. The strange dead air of that house has been going round and round in my head, for the last two years.