City of Shadows (11 page)

“Nick, about Olga . . .”

“Yeah, terrible. You seeing to the arrangements? No, I’ve not fin
ished, mam’zelle.
Ne coupez pas.
”

“Olga. Nick, did you tell her where Anna and I are living?”

“What’s that? Of course not. Nobody knows, except me. Don’t want the Cheka getting to her, do we? Now, listen, Esther, I’ve found this old lady, the grand-duchess girls used to call her Tante Swanny. She’s willing— No, mam’zelle, I’m still talking.
Ne coupez pas.
Tell you what I’ll do when I’ve finished the call, I’ll put the phone down— You still there, Esther? I’m going to fly her up tomorrow. Anastasia was her fa
vorite, she knew her well. We’ll have a trial run with our filly, see how she goes over the jumps.”

Esther tried to divert him: “Nick . . .”

“We’ll be arriving Tempelhof eleven
a.m.
Okay?”

“Olga’s murder, Nick ...I think ...”

But Nick had lost his battle with the French telephone system.

Esther put the receiver down. She went back to the sofa and poured herself more schnapps. “He’s bringing some elderly Romanov to meet Anna tomorrow.”

“She’s not ready.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Loomed over by Olga’s death, the game they were playing was shabby and intolerable.

“It matters,” Natalya said with energy. “There’s a film to be made when she’s recognized as Anastasia—and I’m going to star in it.”

Esther stared at her.

Natalya was defiant. “Well,
she
can’t play the part, can she? You imagine her on a movie set? She’d scream every time they clapped the clapper board.”

“I see,” Esther said. “That’s why you don’t want me go to the police. They might find out who she really is.”

“Go,” said Natalya icily. “They’ll enjoy a good laugh. But I’ll tell you this, if I believed the shit you believe, the last thing I’d do is tell the police—and get our Imperial Highness killed alongside of Olga.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Natalya, leaning forward, “that half the Berlin police force is on the books of some newspaper or other. I got a friend on the
Morgenpost,
and he pays out for any good story. Anastasia back from the dead—that’s a
very
good story. You tell the cops, and before Frau Schinkel knows it, she’ll have flashlights and reporters ten deep outside her door.” She sat back. “That killer you dreamed up, he won’t have to torture anybody to find out Anna’s address; he’ll just have to buy a pa
per.” Her eyes searched Esther’s face for a moment, and then she nod
ded. “With that happy thought, I’m going to bed. We got a grand duchess to prepare in the morning.”

Esther stayed where she was, clutching an empty schnapps glass to her chest. Self-interest, she thought. Every argument Natalya had pro
pounded was in Natalya’s own interest.

On the other hand, that didn’t make them less viable.

Shit,
shit.
Go to the police and give them a chance to catch the killer. Don’t go to the police, thereby ensuring that the killer didn’t catch Anna.

If there
were
a killer after Anna. Which Natalya was sure there wasn’t. And which, through the unaccustomed fumes of schnapps, she, Esther, was also beginning to doubt.

She’d sleep on it.

...

Marie Ivanova Narishkin
had once been a ballet dancer. It was stretching a point to call her a Romanov; she’d merely slept with one, having at one time been mistress to a cousin of Alexander II. When her lover died, she’d occasionally been invited to St. Petersburg as a form of charity.

Now a fat, elderly woman, she’d been tempted out of retirement in France by Nick’s offer of all expenses paid as well as the opportunity to pass judgment on a young woman claiming to be Anastasia.

On greeting her, Esther decided that Nick had chosen his subject well. Marie Ivanova’s self-importance and delight at being taken out of obscurity would undoubtedly ensure that she proclaimed Anna to be the grand duchess, however slight her acquaintance with the imperial family had been.

Oh, God, Esther thought, I want nothing to do with this. Now that it came to it, they were crooks using an old woman in a confidence trick.

There’d been difficulty in getting Anna ready for the meeting. Anna had panicked. “I do not see this person. I am not meat to pick over. I see only Aunt Olga and Aunt Xenia. I do not see Swannies. I go to bed.”

Natalya was infuriated. “Holy Martyr, even
you’d
be a better Anasta
sia, scar or no bloody scar.” This was to Esther; they were tidying Anna’s room, which was in its usual chaos. “Why doesn’t Nick let me do it? I can play a lady. This one don’t know the meaning of the word.” She chucked a load of dirty underwear into a basket. “But oh, no, Natalya, you take the part of the maid because that’s what you’re good at.”

“Marie Ivanova,” Nick said, ushering his guest into the flat, “may I present Esther and Natalya, Her Imperial Highness’s companions.”

Marie Ivanova kept her eyes shut and wheezed from the climb up the stairs. Behind her, carrying wraps and handbags, was a thin, embittered-looking woman, her companion. Nick introduced her as Mademoiselle Mycielcka.

“Where is this creature I have come to see?” Marie Ivanova de
manded when she’d got her breath back.

“Esther, inform Her Imperial Highness that Marie Ivanova is here.”

Esther shook her head; she wasn’t going to be party to this. Nick’s eyes flicked at her and away. “Natalya, if you would be so good.”

Natalya shrugged. “She won’t come out of her room.”

There was a gasp from Mademoiselle Mycielcka and a hissed
“Shit”
from Nick.

Marie Ivanova remained unconcerned. She nodded. “If she is whom you say, that is correct.
I
go to
her.
”

They followed her to the bedroom and stood in its doorway while Marie Ivanova went in and regarded a hump under the bedspread. “I am here, young woman.”

The hump remained motionless and silent.

Marie Ivanova crooked a finger at her companion. “The feet.”

Mycielcka darted forward, whipped up the bottom of the bedcover
ing, and laid it back, exposing Anna’s legs.

“The shoes.”

Mycielcka began untying laces.

“You should know,” said Marie Ivanova, “that the grand duchess Anastasia had deformation of her feet. Hallux valgus. She was most conscious of it. We talked of it often, she and I, because, like most bal
let dancers, I share the complaint.”

The shoes were off.

“The stockings.”

Anna’s stockings were unhooked from her garter belt. Anna, her up
per body and head still covered, did not move.

Peering over Mycielcka’s shoulder, Nick, Esther, and Natalya stared at Anna’s bare feet. They were small and rather ugly. If hallux valgus meant bunions, Anna had them.

Marie Ivanova studied them through her lorgnette, then passed her hand over them. She was crying. “I am here, my child,” she said. “I am with you.”

Anna’s head appeared like a tortoise’s from the carapace of bed
clothes. “Tante Swanny?”

“Yes.”

Anna disengaged her right arm and held it out. As the old woman bent to kiss her hand, she leaned forward and applied her lips to the wrinkled forehead. “Come back,” she whispered in English.

“I shall.”

Mycielcka began guiding her mistress from the room.

Esther heard Natalya’s whisper: “She’s backing out.
She’s backing out.
”

Anna Anderson had been declared royal.

A grinning Prince Nick took Marie Ivanova and her companion off to lunch at the Adlon, turning around and jiggling his hips at the two women standing silently watching their departure.

“She did it,” Natalya said.

“Yes.”

“She did it
right.
”

“Yes.”

“How?” Natalya was suspended between belief and disbelief, resent
ment and elation.

“I don’t know.” Esther felt very tired. She’d spent the night racked by indecision over what to do about Olga’s murder. “I suppose Swanny was always going to believe it.”

“But she really did—believe it, I mean.”

“Yes.”

Natalya allowed resentment to win. “It don’t prove anything,” she said. “Everybody’s got bunions.
I
got bunions.
You
got bunions? How d’you get bunions?”

“High-heeled shoes,” Esther said.

“Exactly.”

Full of Anna’s
triumph, Nick came back from seeing the ladies off at

the airport. “Got old Swanny eating out of her hand, didn’t she?”

“And that’s good, is it?” Esther asked.

He was surprised. “Sure, it is.”

Natalya, anticipating the row to come, said good night and took her
self off to bed.

Esther said, “I’ll tell you what isn’t good.” She didn’t spare him any details of Olga’s death—if she was right about the murderer, there was a sense in which Olga had died for Nick. Then she gave him her opin
ion as to the reason for it.

He didn’t argue. “You’re probably right.”

She was surprised. “You agree it was the same man?”

“Maybe. The Cheka doesn’t give up that easy.”

“It isn’t the
Cheka.
” She was tired of saying it. “It isn’t the Cheka be
cause Anna’s not Anastasia.”

He lit a cigarette and puffed smoke at her. “Tante Swanny says she is.”

“Tante Swanny’s a credulous old woman. Nick, we must go to the police.”

“We did, didn’t we?”

“I mean, tell them that the man’s been trailing Anna since Dalldorf, tell them to interview Clara Peuthert, get her to describe him.”

“Sure,” he said. “That’s a great way to get Anna killed, but okay. Crazy Clara tells them Anna’s the grand duchess—and she will. Next thing we know, Anna’s picture’s in the papers and she’s a target. Bye-bye, Anna, but never mind, little Esther’s been a responsible citizen.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer she always put on the table for him. “Look, kid. Maybe you’re right and someone’s hanging around outside the Hat trying to get a line on Anna. I say he’s Cheka, you say he’s . . . whatever you say he is. It doesn’t matter. Why d’you think I’m keeping this address secret? Those ladies just now, they had no idea which street they were coming to because I didn’t tell ’em. Why do I park two blocks away when I visit? Why do I dodge into doorways and look behind me? For fun? We’re dealing in life and death here.”

She considered. “You’re certain that if we tell the police what we know, the newspapers will get hold of it?”

He displayed his hands. “Ring up the editor of the
Morgenpost,
why don’t you? Cut out the middle man.”

She went for the flaw in his argument. “So all Anna’s schooling is for nothing. You’ll never be able to present her in case the Cheka shoots her down.”

“Esther, Esther.” He shook his head at her obtuseness. “That’ll be a big occasion, and I mean
big.
Guards, Secret Service men with shoot
ers. Nobody gets in without being frisked. A proper press conference, international, radio, movie cameras—the whole borscht right down to the beets. How’s Her Highness’s English coming along, incidentally? The Yanks’ll be there in force.”

She was defeated. “Well, I won’t be. It’s still fraud—and Olga died

for it.” He peered at her. “Ah, come on, baby. You’re tired. Let’s go to bed, uh?” He picked her up and took her to her room, and for a while her body

was able to separate itself from the film loop that went around and around in her head.

Marie Ivanova died
four days after returning to France.

“The trip was too much for her,” Mademoiselle Mycielcka in
formed Nick over the phone with a fury that was not assuaged when he asked if Tante Swanny, before her death, had contacted the Romanovs with the news that Anastasia had returned from the grave.

“She did not.” The phone banged down.

Nick took the setback with equanimity. “Word’ll get around,” he said, and flew off to the funeral, partly to make sure word
did
get around and partly to woo the aristocratic young French
woman he’d met on his previous visit and whom he had hopes of bedding.

Anna’s reception of the news did not disturb the lofty confi
dence she’d acquired after Tante Swanny’s authentication. “Like she’s been crowned by the archi-bloody-mandrite,” Natalya said.

It was Esther who experienced a sting of grief and guilt. Here was another death. They were collecting them.