which they were waiting for me. The following days were days of indescribable anxiety, at the mercy of any chance that might call attention to us. Probably what saved us was that we were lost in the crowd of refugees who filled Tioumen station, and so managed to pass unnoticed.
On July 20th the Whites, as the anti-Bolshevik troops were called, captured Tioumen and saved us from the fanatics who had so nearly claimed us as victims. A few days later the papers published a reproduction of the proclamation that had been placarded in the streets of Ekaterinburg, announcing that the sentence of death passed on the ex-Czar Nicholas Romanoff had been carried out on the night of July 16th-17th and that the Czarina and her children had been removed to a place of safety.
At last, on July 25th, Ekaterinburg fell in its turn. Hardly was communication re-established—which took a long time as the permanent way had suffered severely—when Mr. Gibbes and I hastened to the town to search for the Imperial family and those of our companions who had remained at Ekaterinburg.
Two days after my arrival I made my first entry into Ipatief’s house. I went through the first-floor rooms, which had served as the prison; they were in an indescribable state of disorder. It was evident that every effort had been made to get rid of any traces of the recent occupants. Heaps of ashes had been raked out of the stoves. Among them were a quantity of small articles, half burnt, such as tooth-brushes, hairpins, buttons, etc., in the midst of which I found the end of a hair-brush on the browned ivory of which could still be seen the initials of the Czarina, A. F. (Alexandra-Feodorovna.). If it was true that the prisoners had been sent away, they must have been removed just as they were, without any of the most essential articles of toilet.
I then noticed on the wall in the embrasure of one of the windows of Their Majesties’ room the Empress’s favourite charm, the swastika,[72] which she had put up everywhere to ward off ill-luck. She had drawn it in pencil, and added, underneath, the date, 17/30 April, the day of their incarceration in the house. The same symbol, but without the date, was drawn on the wallpaper, on a level with the bed, occupied doubtless by her or Alexis Nicolaïevitch. But my search was to no purpose, I could not find the slightest clue to their fate.
I went down to the bottom floor, the greater part of which was below the level of the ground. It was with intense emotion that I entered the room in which perhaps—I was still in doubt—they had met their death. Its appearance was sinister beyond expression. The only light filtered through a barred window at the height of a man’s head. The walls and floor showed numerous traces of bullets and bayonet scars. The first glance showed that an odious crime had been perpetrated there and that several people had been done to death. But who? How?
I became convinced that the Czar had perished and, granting that, I could not believe that the Czarina had survived him. At Tobolsk, when Commissary Yakovlef had come to take away the Czar, I had seen her throw herself in where the danger seemed to her greatest. I had seen her, broken-hearted after hours of mental torture, torn desperately between her feelings as a wife and a mother, abandon her sick boy to follow the husband whose life seemed in danger. Yes, it was possible they might have died together, the victims of these brutes. But the children? They too massacred? I could not believe it. My whole being revolted at the idea. And yet everything proved that there had been many victims. Well, then?...
During the following days I continued my investigations in Ekaterinburg and its suburbs—the monastery, everywhere I could hope to find the slightest clue. I saw Father Storojef, who had been the last to conduct religious service in Ipatief’s house, on Sunday, the 14th, two days before the night of terror. He too, alas, had very little hope.
The enquiry proceeded very slowly. It was begun in extremely difficult circumstances, for, between July 17th and 25th the Bolshevik commissaries had had time to efface nearly every trace of their crime. Immediately after the taking of Ekaterinburg by the Whites, the military authorities had surrounded the house with a guard and a judicial enquiry had been opened, but the threads had been so skilfully entangled that it was very difficult to sort them out.
The most important deposition was that of some peasants from the village of Koptiaki, twenty versts north-west of Ekaterinburg. They came to give evidence that on the night of July 16th-17th the Bolsheviks had occupied a clearing in a forest near their village, where they had remained several days. They brought with them objects which they had found near the shaft of an abandoned mine, not far from which could be seen traces of a large fire. Some officers visited the clearing and found other objects, which, like the first, were recognised as having belonged to the Imperial family.