Apart from aristocratic and monarchist circles, the Russian population, intelligentsia and “masses” alike, gave no indication of caring one way or another what happened to Nicholas. Nor was foreign opinion upset. A dispatch filed by the Petrograd correspondent of The Times of London on June 23 and published on July 3 carried an ominous hint:
Every time this kind of public prominence is given to the Romanoff family people think that something serious is on foot. Bolshevists are getting impatient of these frequent surprises about the deposed dynasty, and the question is again raised as to the advisability of settling the fate of the Romanoffs, so as to be done with them once for all.
“Settling the fate of the Romanovs” could, of course, only mean killing them. This rather crude feeler fell on deaf ears.
The indifference to these rumors inside Russia and abroad seems to have sealed the fate of the Imperial family.
On June 17, the family heard the welcome news that the nuns of the Novotikhvinskii Convent, whose previous requests of this nature had been rejected, would be allowed to deliver eggs, milk, and cream to them. As became subsequently known, this was done not out of concern for their well-being but as part of a Cheka plot.
On June 19 or 20, the Imperial prisoners received from the nuns a container of cream, the cork of which had concealed a piece of paper with the following message, carefully penned or more likely copied by someone with poor knowledge of French:
Les amis ne dorment plus et espèrent que l’heure si longtemps attendue est arrivée. La revolte des tschekoslovaques menace les bolcheviks de plus en plus serieusement. Samara, Tschelabinsk et toute la Sibirie orientale et occidentale est au pouvoir de gouvernement national provisoir. L’armée des amis slaves est à quatre-vingt kilometres d’Ekaterinbourg, les soldats de l’armée rouge ne resistent pas efficassement. Soyez attentifs au tout mouvement de dehors, attendez et espérez. Mais en même temps, je vous supplie, soyez prudents, parce que les bolcheviks avant d’être vaincus represent pour vous le peril réel et sérieux. Soyez prêts toutes les heures, la journée et la nuit. Faite le croquis des vos deux chambres, les places, des meubles, des lits. Ecrivez bien l’heure quand vous allez couchir vous tous. L’un de vous ne doit dormir de 2 à 3 heure toutes les nuits qui suivent. Repondez par quelques mots mais donnez, je vous en prie, tous les renseignements utiles pour vos amis de dehors. C’est au même soldat qui vous transmet cette note qu’il faut donner votre reponse par ecrit mais dites pas un seul mot.
Un qui est prêt a mourir pour vous
L’officieu [sic] de l’armée Russe.*
The response was supplied on the same sheet of crumpled notebook paper. Next to the inquiry about the hour when the family retired, is written “à 11½”; the query about “two rooms” is corrected to “three rooms.” Underneath is written in a firm, legible hand:
du coin jusqu’au balcon. 5 fenêtres donnent sur la rue, 2 sur la place. Toutes les fenêtres sont fermées, collées et peintes en blanc. Le petit est encore malade et au lit, et ne peut pas marcher du tout—chaque secousse lui cause des douleurs. Il y a une semaine, qu’a cause des anarchist[es] on pensait a nous faire partir à Moscou la nuit. Il ne faut rien risquer sans être absolument sûr du résultat. Sommes presque tout le temps sous observation attentive.*
This secret message from alleged rescuers has some puzzling features. To begin with, its language. The letter is not written in a form which a monarchist officer would adopt toward his sovereign: it is hard to conceive that he would address him as “vous” instead of “Votre Majesté.” Altogether, the vocabulary and style of this letter are so unusual that one investigator of the Ekaterinburg tragedy believed it to be an outright forgery.57 Then there is the question of how the letter reached the prisoners. Its author refers to a soldier, presumably a guard. But Avdeev, the commandant of the Ipatev guards, writes that the secret letter was discovered in the cork of a bottle with cream brought by the nuns, and turned over to the Chekist Goloshchekin, who had it copied before delivering it to the prisoners. According to Avdeev,58 the Cheka pursued the matter and found the author to be a Serbian officer by the name of “Magich,” whom it arrested. There was, indeed, in the area a Serbian officer and member of the Serbian military mission to Russia, Major Jarko Konstantinovich Mičič (Michich), who had aroused suspicion by requesting to see Nicholas.59 It is also known that Mičič traveled to the Urals to locate and rescue the Serbian Princess Helen Petrovna, the wife of Grand Duke Ivan Konstantinovich, interned at Alapaevsk. But it can be established from the recollections of Micic’s traveling companion, Serge Smirnov, that the two men had arrived in Ekaterinburg only on July 4, which meant that Mičič could not have written from there on June 19–20.60
Another possible bearer of the initial note was Alexis’s physician, Dr. Derevenko. It is known, however, from Derevenko’s deposition, given the Soviet authorities in 1931, that he was forbidden during his visits to have any communication with the prisoners.61 It can be further established from Alexandra’s diaries that he paid his last visit to Ipatev’s house on June 21, which makes it theoretically possible for him to have carried the first secret message, but even this was not likely since, confirming Derevenko, Alexandra wrote that he never appeared “without Avdeev, so impossible to say one word to him.”
It thus seems reasonable to suppose that the letter was fabricated by the Cheka and delivered to the prisoners by a guard involved in the provocation.*
According to Avdeev, Nicholas replied to the first letter two or three days after he had received it,62 which would date it between June 21 and 23. The response was, of course, intercepted, setting in motion the Cheka’s scheme.
On June 22, apparently in reaction to Nicholas’s response, workers inspected the windows in the Imperial couple’s bedroom. The next day, to the latter’s delight, one of the double windows was removed and a ventilation pane opened, letting fresh air into the stuffy and hot upper floor. The prisoners were forbidden to lean out: when one of the girls stuck her head out too far, a guard fired.
On June 25, a second secret message arrived; a third followed on June 26. Incontrovertible evidence that these letters reached the Imperial family comes from the diary of Nicholas, who under the date June 14 [27] incautiously wrote: “We have recently received two letters, one after the other, which advised us to be ready to be spirited away by some devoted people!”