“Well it’s obviously not bottomless!” The ice under our skates is a foot thick, but crystal clear. Below it we can see the bottom of the lake, like looking through glass into an aquarium. Perhaps twenty feet below us is a carpet of even, brown gravel, as if on a carriage-drive. Torpid fish rest on the bottom. Nothing moves: I gaze at a hidden world in suspended animation.
“What’s that?”
I point down between my feet. The shape I can see lying among the gravel is a familiar one, yet utterly unexpected. Perhaps six inches long, black, and almost the shape of a letter L. Yuri looks at it, then at me. He gives a low whistle.
“No-one could ever see that, when the lake is not frozen. That gun might have lain there a hundred years without being discovered.”
“The murder weapon.”
“A lawyer might say: have you got proof of that? But fortunately neither you nor I are lawyers. We both know we are looking at the gun used to kill Svea Håkansson. Someone shot her – then they threw the gun into the lake.”
“We must get it.”
“Seeing the gun down there under the ice is one thing, Agnes; pulling it up off the lake bottom is another. We need some equipment to get down to it. But nearby is the storeroom that Rasputin was so concerned about. Let’s take a look in there. We might find something useful.”
We go to the door of the storeroom. It’s not locked, but it’s jammed with frost. As Yuri pulls it, not just the door but part of the frame comes away: the wood is soft and rotten. “This place is practically falling down” he grins, as we step into the dark interior.
It’s a junk room. Pots of paint, brushes and ladders are stacked in disarray. The oars of a boat lean against a wall, and I nearly trip over a table-umbrella for shading summer picnics. There’s even a pile of rusty ice-skates. But Yuri picks up an object leaning against a wall, just inside the door. It’s a long stick of bamboo, with a metal ring and a net on the end; he holds it out, and I look at it.
“A child’s fishing-net!”
“A summer toy for the Tsar’s children. Ideal for lifting the gun, Agnes – but the handle is far too short. Now, if we can find a long stick to lash it to…” He lifts something else from the floor; a wooden boating pole. Moments later he has found some string and is lashing the fishing-net to the pole, while muttering to himself. “What we need now is – ah, here’s one! An ice-saw.”
I look around the dark interior of the store room. One tiny area of floor is clear of the piled junk, as if someone has used it as a place to stand. I step over to it, and notice a small drape, drawn as if covering a window. Did someone stand here, looking out of the hut? I draw back the drape.
There’s no window behind it; just the wooden wall of the hut and a shelf. On the shelf is a large metal box with dials, levers and a wire aerial. Yuri stares at it.
“That’s a Russian Army field wireless.”
“Why would it be here, Yuri?”
“I have no idea. It’s the strangest thing yet…” He steps over, turns a dial. “Dead, of course. The battery has been sitting here in sub-zero temperatures for ages.”
He peers at it for a minute, then looks up and says briskly “Oh well. It’s not going to speak to us and tell us what it’s doing here… We’d better get back out on the ice. It’s already mid-afternoon, and you know how short midwinter days are at this latitude. As the light fades, it will get harder to see that gun down there.”
We go back onto the lake, and Yuri saws a circle in the ice. We look down the hole into the freezing water.
“Here we go.” Yuri lowers the net. The light is dying on the western horizon, and the sky above us is now like deep blue velvet. The first star glimmers. Not much light is filtering down into the water, but I can just make out the fishing-net far below me, swishing about a few feet above the black shape of the gun. Yuri shakes his head. “I need to go a bit deeper.” He lies flat on the ice and reaches over the hole, his fingers nearly touching the water. I shout excitedly.
“It’s in the net!”
Moments later, Yuri tips the gun out onto the ice, and I dry it with a cloth I found in the storeroom. I can feel the moisture in the cloth freezing and stiffening, even as I finish drying the gun. I hold it up, and Yuri peers at it.
“It’s not a standard Russian Army gun, that’s for sure. A specialist pistol – and not Russian manufacture. We don’t have any gunsmiths making pieces as high-quality as this one. It was made in western Europe, or the United States, and then imported – for sale to a private individual, not for military use. And there’s a serial number – look. But it means nothing to me.”
The figures DCE5654 are stamped in almost microscopic print on the barrel. The rest of the gun is without marks. I hold it in my hand: a black enigma. Then I pass it to Yuri with a shiver. As he stows it in the haversack, he says “You must take this gun with you, Agnes, when we get back to Ivangorod. You can add it to the other information you and Professor Axelson are gathering.”
“Thank you. The professor may know how to trace where it’s from.”
Yuri looks up at the stars which are now appearing one-by-one in the darkening sky. “We needed that daylight for the fishing. We don’t need it for searching the three Princesses. I have a flashlight.”
We go to each island, and look around each house in turn. None are locked, and all are completely empty, just darkened shells. Even the few pieces of furniture I saw on my other visit have been taken. The last one we enter is the First Princess, and Yuri laughs as we step over the threshold. “This big room, and the one bedroom, were both for General Aristarkhov’s exclusive use. Bukin and I slept on a moth-eaten mattress on the kitchen floor. But look, they even took that mattress away when they cleared the place out.” He’s right: as in the other two houses, there is nothing to see.
We step out of the house; the lake-ice stretches into a dark distance. I think out loud. “Should we be getting back now?” But I hear something; a scattered sound out across the lake, as if music is echoing off the faraway trees.
“Yuri, are you sure we’re here alone? For a moment I thought I heard… a kind of shimmering sound. Like sleigh bells.”
“You still believe in Santa Claus?” Yuri laughs, and I do too. And I hear the sound again.
“That noise—”
He holds a hand up to his ear. “Well, well. It must be cold indeed…” We sit on the frozen grass at the edge of the lake, putting on our skates. “Before the war, Agnes, I was stationed in the far north. The Siberian people – reindeer herders – told me what causes that noise. It’s the moisture in our own breath, turning instantly to ice crystals in the air. The sound is close, but it seems to come from far away. The Siberians called it ‘whispers of the stars’. Even most Russians have not heard that sound.”
“Do we need to get back quickly?”
“There’s plenty of starlight to light our way.” We push off from the shore, skating out onto the silky ice. The stars are reflected in its shimmering surface.
“Do you waltz, Agnes?”
“A little…”
“Come here.”
I feel his hands take mine, gripping my gloves. My eyes are level with his shoulders. The next moment I’m sliding backwards; it feels like falling, but his arm is around my waist. I look up and see the stars, shooting past Yuri’s face. We’re gliding and spinning across the frozen surface; the dancing stars like lamps above us, the sparkling ice below. The moment goes on, and I don’t want it to end.
10
The lowered rifle
The air feels like spring. It’s late February, but the sunshine is warm through the windows of my train as it pulls into St Petersburg and stops in Vitebsky Station. The carriage door is opened for me by Professor Axelson; he takes my suitcase as I step down onto the platform.