‘Yes, sir. The pride of the French fleet,’ he announced. ‘She starts on Friday from Cherbourg where she takes on board a few chefs de cuisine and a chanteuse or two. Then she nips across to Southampton where she picks up the English contingent and goes in one hop to New York. Dancing and dining and entertainment all the way. From there, first class again on the transcontinental railway … Chicago and the sunset route west to San Francisco.’
They all fell silent, imagining the luxury, the adventure, the wide horizons. Someone sighed.
‘May I ask what Anna Petrovna is supposed to do with herself once she gets to California, sir?’ Lily asked.
‘Ah, yes! The whole point of the exercise! Now — what would constitute an impulse strong enough to counter the urge to kill? I’ll tell you: friendship, a reunion, the promise of a fresh start and a wonderful climate, they tell me, in California. And a thriving Russian colony to welcome her. Got your cutting, Bacchus?’
The Branch man showed it around the table and began to read out salient details. ‘This appeared a week ago so it’s very fresh. There’s a good chance that she’s not seen it. It’s an eye-witness report. A woman recognized as the archduchess Tatiana has been sighted in the city of San Francisco. Several times. Climbing aboard a cable-car … dancing at Governor Stephens’s fund-raising event for Asiatic orphans … sipping champagne in a night club … You can imagine.’
‘Well, you know how it is,’ Joe said with a smile. ‘An odd thing, but anyone who disappears is reported to have been sighted in San Francisco.’
‘Your hero, Oscar, responsible for that little insight, I believe?’ Bacchus commented.
With an impatient sigh, Lily burst in: ‘San Francisco? But that’s halfway round the world! What would a Russian princess be doing in San Francisco? What would any Russians be doing there? It’s a nonsense!’ Her voice was amused and disbelieving.
Fanshawe, for once, concurred. ‘Another one. For dead girls, the Tsar’s daughters don’t half get about the globe. The last sighting was in Rome. Another one in Japan. And then there was that novice who turned up in a Greek nunnery last year … That was supposed to be the religious one — Olga. There’s an Anastasia or two doing the rounds in Germany … that one they fished out of a canal in Berlin last winter seems to be putting on a convincing act. They’re all over the show. Anywhere but in the Koptyaki forest buried under a ton of railway sleepers. They’re dead. The whole lot of them. And we don’t have to guess — the Bolshies have held up their bloodstained hands for this one.’
‘Many would think twice before accepting evidence or even a confession from those duplicitous thugs,’ Sandilands reprimanded. ‘This identification is not so easily dismissed, Fanshawe. And it’s one we really could wish had not surfaced. I have to tell you … it is supported by other evidence of survival.’ He pursed his lips and fidgeted with his tie.