by Evelyn Weiss
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.
You went up to the main Dacha. No-one was about. You looked down at the lake, and saw the islands. You went down there, and walked along the causeway, past one island with a little house, then another.
At the third island, you saw the house that you thought was the Third Princess. You looked into the house, expecting to see Rasputin. As I said, people see what they expect to see. But when I stood up on the beach with the others, a few minutes ago, I showed how little can really be seen of a person, when they have a bright light behind them.
It was the same on the sunny afternoon that I was there, in August 1916, three weeks after the murder. The professor and I were standing at the door of the Princess house. We looked right through it, and through the French windows, at the glare of the sun sparkling on the lake. The conditions on the day you were there must have been very similar. The brightness of the sun and the lake would silhouette any person standing on the porch, when seen from that doorway.
So you saw the outline of a tall figure, standing with their back to you. The person was completely unaware of you. They had flowing dark hair, and they were wearing a long white robe, like that of a monk. The figure was leaning on the rail of the porch and looking away from you, out at the lake. And you knew that, one way or another, Rasputin had to be stopped.
You are a planner and a plotter, not a trigger-happy chancer, Lord Buttermere. But you showed me, in the butterfly gallery at the Ivangorod Museum, that you are quite ready to use a gun, if you think it is necessary.”
Buttermere nods.
“A few moments ago, I tossed a stone onto the beach behind us. You heard the sound, and being right handed, you glanced over your right shoulder, to see what the noise was. The figure you saw on the porch of the Princess house did the same, when they heard you at the door. That person was standing, facing the lake, with their head beginning to turn over their right shoulder.
You stood at the door, looking at the silhouetted figure, and you had your gun in your hand. As the figure turned their head, you fired. The bullet entered the right temple, and came out the left side of the skull, where it shattered the bones. Svea fell, into the wicker chair, her head still turned over her right shoulder. Later, that position, and that damage, was what Prince Alexei saw.”
The waves are still shining on the white sand, and the slim, elegant gentleman beside me shakes his head silently.
“Shall we turn round now, Lord Buttermere, and walk back to the others? As I said, Svea Håkansson wasn’t sitting, when she was shot. She was standing, then she fell into the chair, onto Alexei’s book, which he later pulled out from beneath her body.
I’m sure it was an awful moment for you, in that little house, when you realized what you’d done. But it was after you had flung the gun into the lake, and when you were hurrying back along the causeway, that you saw why you had been misled. There are in fact four islands, and four houses, but the first was only a storeroom. What you had thought was the Third Princess was in fact only the Second. It was Svea’s house, not Rasputin’s.
That little storeroom on its island has a lot to answer for. It misled you as to which Princess was which. But it also betrayed you in another way, when I went back there with Yuri in December 1916.
As you told me, when you went to Tri Tsarevny, you were disguised as an eccentric butterfly collector. The most obvious attribute of a butterfly collector is, of course, his butterfly net. You shot Svea, then in dismay, you went over to look at her corpse. At that point, I guess, you noticed that you’d got blood on your butterfly net.
Unlike the gun, a net would hardly sink in the lake. So throwing it into the water was not an option. But as you ran along the causeway, you decided you had to get rid of that butterfly net somehow. You hid it inside the neglected old storeroom. Months later, Yuri and I went into the storeroom, found the net, and used it to get the gun off the bottom of the lake. We assumed it was a fishing net, for children.
But Alexei wasn't allowed down by the lake, and it couldn’t have been left over from an earlier visit, because Tatiana Romanov assured me that they had never had a family holiday at Tri Tsarevny. As I said, the place was like a mausoleum: no children had ever holidayed there. So I began to wonder about the net, and whether it really did belong to a child.”
I glance at my companion’s profile; his straight nose and fine, delicate features. As always, his face is calm and assured, except for a shine in his eye that might be the beginning of a tear. The distant voices are getting closer again now. General Aristarkhov is speaking to the others, but I can’t make out the words. I finish my story.
“So, Lord Buttermere, I realised that the net might, instead, belong to a butterfly collector. That was what made me suspect you. But my proof is the gun. Yuri and I found it in the lake. Then, later on, Rufus took it with him to Armenia. Before he left us, I asked him to use his contacts in British Intelligence to check out the serial number of the gun – DCE5654. Rufus wrote back to me from Yeravan. His letter said that British Intelligence had telegraphed him with confirmation that a gun with that number was issued to you, Lord Buttermere, before you left England for Russia. Rufus’s letter reached me at the Sultan’s Fortress in Canakkale, a few days ago.”
The others are now only a few paces away. Suddenly, Aristarkhov loses patience. He shouts, and two guards step over to Yuri and grip his arms, just like the policemen did in Moscow. Another guard stands in front of Professor Axelson, ready to hold him back if he tries to interfere. I look at Lord Buttermere.
“I owe you my life.”
“Last night? I was just doing my job. I came to arrest Kılıç Pasha. When I got into the ruins of Troy, I naturally stopped him and his men committing further crimes, just as anyone would have done.” There’s a hint of a laugh in his voice as he adds “As you know, Miss Frocester, I dislike unnecessary violence.”
“You know what you have to do now?”
“Of course.”
Lord Buttermere calls across the beach; his voice is clear as a bell. “Aristarkhov! Call your men off! I have some news for you.”
He walks the last few paces across the sand to the general, and speaks quietly to him. Aristarkhov signals to the guards, and they let Yuri go. Professor Axelson and I stand, listening intently: we’re trying to hear what Buttermere and Aristarkhov are saying, as they talk together in low voices. Five minutes pass. Then Aristarkhov speaks, decisively.
“Very well. Have it your way.”
Aristarkhov turns to us; his blue eyes are hard and clear, but he speaks through clenched teeth. “It seems that we have a confession to the murde
r of Svea Håkansson. Lord Buttermere, in the light of what he has just told me, will be accompanying my party to Russia, to stand trial.”
Two of the guards are standing either side of Lord Buttermere now. But Aristarkhov hasn’t quite finished.
“Of course, Lord Buttermere, we will have to tell a little fiction about how this happened. It will be our word against yours.” He looks at the professor and me. “I will say that the English lord’s arrest on the beach in Lemnos was not quite as dignified and co-operative as it actually has been. We will say that there was an unseemly scuffle… and a gun went off, quite accidentally.”
He signals to the other two guards. They draw their pistols, and the general’s voice barks.
“Shoot Sirko!”
For answer, the guards look blankly at Aristarkhov.
“Where is he, sir?”
Aristarkhov’s eyes, and those of the guards, scan the beach. I see a shape in the faraway waves. The professor laughs out loud.
“I always said it! Russians are strong swimmers, eh?”
Aristarkhov stares at the distant figure, which is now almost invisible in the blue waters. “Damn you, men! You were supposed to be watching him!”
“Shall we go after him, sir?”
The general glares at the guards. Through all this, Emily and Bukin have stood by silently. But now Mr Bukin speaks, in a quiet, firm voice.
“General – you have Lord Buttermere under arrest. So you have captured your murder suspect. That’s what we came here to do, sir. It seems that Captain Sirko has not done anything wrong.”
Muttering angrily, Aristarkhov leads the way to the boat. I see them moving, a little procession on the sand; Bukin, Emily, the general, the guards, and the unbowed figure of their prisoner.
“Will they execute him, Professor?”
“Anything can happen, Miss Agnes. Lord Buttermere’s fate will depend on political machinations. Not on the rights and wrongs of the case.”
I’m hearing the professor’s words, but they seem to come from far away. I’m hoping against all hope, looking intently among the waves as they rise and fall, but Yuri is nowhere to be seen.
The Russian party’s boat is pushing off from the shore now. Aristarkhov directs, and the guards follow his orders, taking the oars. Lord Buttermere sits calmly and quietly, his bright eyes gazing out at the sea. I can’t see the faces of Emily or Bukin, or guess at what they are thinking and feeling.
The oars move, and the boat rows away from us. As it recedes among the waves, it begins to look blurred through my tears. Soon it’s just a tiny smudge, sitting on the water alongside the silent gray battleship in the distance. In every other direction, the empty sea stretches to a blue horizon. The professor and I are left alone on the beach with the debris of our picnic. Our little boat sits on the edge of the water, rocking gently to and fro, as the waves lap quietly on the sand.
The End
Author’s statement
This book is copyright © by Evelyn Weiss. I assert all my legal rights as the author of this book Murder and Revolution, including my right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the book’s author. I reserve all legal rights to myself. No part of this book Murder and Revolution may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or distributed or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without my prior permission.
Russia is a land of stories. This is a work of fiction.
So, I use conventions that are easy for the reader. Place names are in their modern form. For example, St Petersburg was actually renamed Petrograd on the outbreak of war in 1914, in order to sound less Germanic: but I have stuck with the more familiar St Petersburg. Dates of major events, on the other hand, keep with the Russian calendar of the time. In this book, the October Revolution happened in October, not November.
Two of my sources may be of interest to readers who would like to see the backdrops to this story. The paintings of Zinaida Serebriakova and the color photographs of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (and indeed, their own life stories) are windows onto a lost world, on the eve of its destruction.
Our present-day society is still learning to hear the voices of victims of abuse and violence. One hundred years ago, Aurora Mardiganian was an extraordinary pioneer of victims’ voices – see, for example, https://auroraprize.com/en/aurora/detail/13250/
2018-aurora-prize-awarded-to-kyaw-hla-aung. Aurora’s story, and others like hers, resonate in the fictional events in the later chapters of the book. But no part of the book purports to be history. All the fictional characters in the book are invented; they bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead, and exist only to entertain the reader. As Marina Beadleston, whose great-uncle was Tsar Nicholas II, said, in the New York Times:
“A total fantasy is fine, so long as somewhere a history book and parents correct it to explain what really happened.”
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