At this point, it's important to keep all these dates straight. Brightman was telling me all this in 1939. If his story was true, Anna Kostina would have given birth five or six years before. But during that time the Great Purge had begun — and in the first of the trials, in late 1934, Zinoviev had fallen. The details won't concern you, but he was actually tried and sentenced twice, the second time to death, and a number of his friends and associates fell with him, including Anna Kostina. Apparently she hadn't been executed, but had received a long sentence in what we'd now call the Gulag.
But what about Brightman's child?
This, of course, was the reason he'd come to see me. He'd long since assumed (so he said) that the child was lost, or at least that he'd never see her, but now he claimed to have received word from inside the U.S.S.R. that it might be possible to get her out. But to do so, he said, would require my help: specifically, he wanted me to provide him with the papers necessary to get the child into the country. He'd already worked out how I could do this. As it happened, I had two children of my own, one six years old, the other newborn. If I applied for a passport, submitting Brightman's photograph instead of my own, and had my two daughters included on it, Brightman could travel overseas as me and return with the child.
I agreed to do this.
It makes no difference why; I understood what I was doing, and wanted to do it.
Shortly afterwards, having received "my" passport, Brightman departed for Europe, and a few months later — early in 1940—I had the unique experience of meeting "myself at the dockside. But I was now given quite a surprise. The child Brightman should have brought back was a six- or seven-year-old. In fact, the child in his arms was an infant. It was all very cunning. He had no difficulty bringing her into the country, for she merely took the part of my younger daughter rather than my older one. But was this, in fact, the child he'd originally intended to get? He said not; he claimed that it had proved impossible to bring his own child out, so instead he'd rescued the child of another Russian friend who was in some sort of political danger. Who was this friend? He wouldn't say. He merely insisted that the danger was real, and that he therefore wished to adopt the child as quickly as possible. Again, he asked for my help. I was more reluctant to give it to him — I was now convinced I'd been lied to — but I was involved so deeply that it was hard to object. I looked around for a way to do what he wanted. It seemed difficult, perhaps impossible — until we had a stroke of luck: Florence Raines. You will have guessed, in a general way, her involvement, but I will tell you the details if only to ensure that you leave her family alone. In 1939 she was a young black woman who'd been my patient for several years. In the usual way, she came to me and I discovered that she was pregnant. This calamity, though common enough, was especially hard on her because she had a job with the Board of Education (a job other people might have despised but which seemed an excellent one to her) and she would lose it automatically on "morals" grounds. Desperate, she came to me a few days later and asked for an abortion. I agreed — until a further examination convinced me that it would have been dangerous, for medical reasons. I helped her, though, as best I could, providing a letter to her supervisor requiring her to take an extended medical leave. This was accepted. Accordingly, she went to stay with her mother, who lived a little outside of town, and there I brought her child into the world. Since the grandmother was prepared to keep the child with her, this seemed to cope with the problem and I forgot about it. Then, a few weeks after Brightman's return from Europe, Florence called me. Her child was very sick, perhaps dying. I immediately went to her house, where I discovered that the grandmother had been very ill with the flu and the child had contracted it. A day later, despite my best efforts, it succumbed. I saw my opportunity at once and without even consulting Brightman I took it. Of course, I had to break the law to do so. Normally, when someone dies, the doctor prepares a death certificate, which is submitted to the local authorities, who then issue a burial order. But I didn't want Elizabeth Raines to die; not officially. I explained to Florence that the normal burial of her child would probably lead to her own exposure, and that if she "looked after" the burial on her own, I would ignore the requirement of the death certificate. Florence agreed immediately, though it took her longer to square the grandmother. She accomplished this, however, and so I acquired, as it were, a bona fide infant identity. I presented it to Brightman. He was leery at first, but soon saw the virtue of the solution chance had now offered us. He insisted (sensibly) that Florence be kept in the dark, thereby necessitating a "public" adoption procedure, but even this was a help — it removed any mystery about his new daughter's identity. She would be provided, so to speak, with a genealogy that would lead everyone away from her real one (whatever it was). The only problem seemed to be the mother's color. But that was really no problem at all. Race was not a part of a child's birth records in Nova Scotia, and so as long as no one met Florence or any other member of her family (a sheriff, say, serving a paper), we'd be all right. Now Bright-man's money came into play. He handled this part himself, so I don't know the details, but both Florence Raines and her mother disappeared. (I'd assumed forever; until you told me, I had no idea that either had come back to Halifax.) And so, some little time afterwards, the adoption went through.
The above, Mr. Thome, is everything I know about this matter. Once the adoption was complete, my contacts with Brightman became infrequent, and I haven't seen him at all since 1945.
I have no idea why he has now disappeared.