David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

It was on this corner that the house stood.

Perched at the apex of the junction, with the roads sloping away in two directions, some of the ground floor windows further down the street were, at the top of the hill, almost below street level. A substantial building with two floors, a courtyard and a garden, it was built of stone with quoins at the corners that matched windows in the attic rooms in the roof. These, in arched stone, mirrored the semicircular porch awnings above the main entrance. This stood at the top of a short flight of steps. Another door, on the side of the house that faced the street running down to the river, had to be accessed because of the rising ground down a flight of steps.

According to Voitzekhovsky, when the Czechs had first arrived in Ekaterinburg there had been a tall wooden fence around the property — more of a palisade from the way the colonel had described it — but it had been taken down shortly after they got there. The Czechs had also found a shrine in front of the property and had taken it to be some sort of devotional tribute to the dead. The shrine, however, had been erected some years earlier to commemorate the church that had originally stood on the site. That had been demolished when the new, larger church — with the bell tower — had been built further along the street.

The house had been the summer residence of a well-to-do local family by the name of Ipatiev. He had been a soldier when younger and was now a metallurgist of some repute, although this hadn’t stopped the local Bolsheviks from evicting him and his family when the house was deemed suitable as accommodation for some special prisoners. After the Legion had entered Ekaterinburg, given the import of what had happened there, a colonel by the name of Sokolov had been tasked with investigating the deaths. Despite this, Gajda decided to make the house his headquarters. Voitzekhovsky’s face had assumed a stony impassiveness as he had imparted this particular piece of information and Paul assumed the Russian had not approved. It seemed to Paul, however, that Gajda’s action had been in keeping with what he had heard of the Slovak’s character: headstrong, supremely confident, and suggestive of the kind of hubris that, sooner or later, was likely to trip him up.

A sentry box stood on the corner of the house. Two Czech soldiers were inside, sheltering from the wind. One of them acknowledged Paul as he approached, giving him the kind of comradely wave that, in the Legion, passed for a salute. Paul was about to stop and ask if it might be possible to take a look inside but, by the time he thought about it, the sentry had ducked back into the box again out of the wind.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Paul walked up the steps to the front door.

He had been on the North Sea, on board the steamer Hesperus , when he had read of the tsar’s murder. It had been the 21st of July, if he remembered correctly, and several days after the murders had actually occurred. The family had been shot, in fact, three days before his interview with Cumming. He had wondered since if C had known that they were already dead. It was possible, although the Bolsheviks had not announced the deaths at the time — and had been mealy-mouthed about the fact when they finally did. The leadership in Moscow would have known by then, of course — they after all had given the orders — and it wasn’t the sort of news one could keep a lid on.

Paul couldn’t remember if, at the time, Cumming had said much about the Imperial Family at all. He did recall it mentioned that no one was keen on the Bolsheviks getting their hands on the Russian treasury as ransom in return for the tsar’s safe-passage. All in all, though, Paul thought the chances were that Cumming hadn’t known or he wouldn’t have wasted his breath on the matter. That Cumming hadn’t been too clear on the progress of the Legion was obvious. In fact, at the time, Legion trains had only been days away from Ekaterinburg and it was now supposed it had been the chance of rescue that had prompted the Bolsheviks to murder of the family. Personally Paul wasn’t entirely convinced of the argument. If the Bolsheviks had wanted to stop the former tsar falling into the Legion’s hands, all they had to do was take the family with them when they retreated. It seemed much more likely to him that their death had already been ordered, regardless of the Legion’s advance. After all, they had made short work of the grand dukes and any other members of the family they could lay their hands on, and there had been no one near threatening to rescue them .

Not that the Legion — as far as Paul was aware — had had any plans to rescue the tsar and his family. It was doubtful they had even known where Nicholas was or, if they had, cared. It wasn’t as though they had joined the Družina to fight for Nicholas; they had joined it to fight against Franz-Josef. As far as they were concerned one autocrat was much like another.

The door wasn’t locked. Paul pushed it open. There was no sound of voices or movement inside and, standing in the entrance hall in front of a wide flight of stairs leading up to the first floor, all he could hear was the sound of the wind scouring the square behind him. He cleared his throat noisily. Silence. He called out and, when no reply came, closed the door behind him and started up the stairs.

Voitzekhovsky had said that the rooms used by the Imperial Family — and in particular the cellar where they had been murdered — had been sealed pending the investigation but that Gajda had opened them up again to show visitors. Perhaps by now the investigation was over. Sokolov had apparently been out in the forest excavating the spot where the burned bodies were supposedly buried, so it might be that he’d finished with the house. Ipatiev had apparently been allowed back in after the Legion retook Ekaterinburg and given the use of some of the ground floor rooms. But whether the metallurgist’s family was still in residence, Voitzekhovsky hadn’t said. It might be that after the Bolsheviks and the murder, the Legion and Gajda, the property had lost some of its charm for them.

Paul assumed that Gajda and his staff were at the banquet; given that the house appeared empty he supposed anyone else usually there had been given the day off. And just as well, he thought, as it was almost as cold inside as it had been out. There was no heating and, climbing the stairs, he had noticed that mud, presumably tracked in through the front door, had frozen on the floor. Paul imagined the house would by now have been thoroughly ransacked, both by troops and by sightseers. There would doubtless have been plenty of ghoulish individuals looking for souvenirs of the dead tsar and his family. The rooms, though, to the contrary, were in good order.

Paul’s curiosity wasn’t ghoulish, of course. He was there, he had assured himself, in order that he might be able to report accurately on what he found to Cumming. Should the need arise. Not that he saw there was a great deal to report. The furnishings seemed intact and there were no particular gaps anywhere that might betray an item looted. He found a particularly well-furnished dining room with pictures still hanging on the walls — if somewhat skewed — and, in one especially large room dominated by a great stone fireplace, a desk which he supposed would have generally been manned by Gajda. Drapes hung at the windows and cushions lay scattered about on the chairs, although whether these had been brought in by Gajda, supplied for the comfort of the Imperial Family, or had belonged to Ipatiev, he couldn’t say. In fact, moving from room to room, he found it almost possible to believe that anything untoward had ever happened there.

Looking out of a window on the first floor, he saw a wooden veranda with a staircase that led down to the courtyard. Icicles hung in thinly pointed cones from the eaves and from the staircase balustrading. In the courtyard snow lay thick on the ground, the garden unmarked by footprints. A few fruit trees stood among a tangle of growth, bare now of course and showing nothing but the twist of their arthritic twigs and branches. Beyond were birch and lime trees.