Evelyn Weiss - Murder and Revolution

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 looks 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.

But I realised how Svea’s murder had actually been committed because of something else. In St Petersburg, when Axelson talked to Mr Bukin about Alexei’s tutor, he said ‘he’. He made an assumption about gender. He was probably misled by the name, picturing Nestor as a wise silver-haired Greek king. It’s a bit like the ladies' bath-house in St Petersburg….”

Lord Buttermere looks quizzically at me, and I explain. “To be honest, Lord Buttermere, I'm a bit of a shrinking violet sometimes. But when I went into a room at the bath house labelled ‘Ladies’ I gaily stripped all my clothes off. Because I never expected to see a man in there.”

Lord Buttermere laughs, and I add “Sometimes, we see what we expect to see. Expectations can mislead us.”

“Indeed.”

“When you visited Tri Tsarevny, Lord Buttermere, the guards on the old stone quay, who were very bored with their duties, told you all the legends about the place. They told you the story of Ivan the Fool and the three princesses, and how the little islands and their houses are always referred to as the First, Second and Third Princess. You asked the guards about things of more immediate interest to you – about Svea Håkansson, who you had come to meet, and about Rasputin, whose plans for a cease fire between Russia and Germany would be a disaster for both Britain and Sweden. The guards at the quay told you that Svea was in the Second Princess, and Rasputin in the Third Princess.