Ruzsky listened to the steady thump of the horses hooves in the snow. He began to hum quietly.

“What is it?” she asked him.

“I’ve no idea. Mother used to sing it to us.”

Maria listened to him. He could see that she was smiling.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Not funny, joyful. Memories.”

“Of what?”

She sighed. “Of our summers. Of the azure blue sea and skies bright like joy…”

“Pushkin.”

“So your tutors did not neglect you, Sandro. We had a big white house overlooking the bay, with a long, sloping lawn. My father was the governor and my mother renowned for her beauty and her voice. In the summer, she would sing after dinner in the garden. Kitty and I would listen from the upstairs window when we were supposed to be asleep.”

“Your father was the governor?”

Maria did not reply.

“I didn’t know that.” Ruzsky waited for her to continue and when she did not, he asked: “What do you remember of your mother?”

“Of my mother?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you ask that?”

Ruzsky shrugged. “Piecing together the jigsaw, just as you are.”

Maria thought deeply for a minute or more. “Everything. Every little detail. Every expression, every act of kindness. If I believed in God, perhaps I could believe it was his doing, but I don’t and it wasn’t.”

“How long was your father the governor for?”

“Some time.”

“You were close?”

“Who is it that you were traveling with?” she asked. “Another detective?”

“Yes. My deputy, Pavel.”

“Also the son of a noble family?”

“No. He used to be a constable.”

“What did you tell him?”

“To wait until I got there. We were being followed.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Ruzsky thought back to the other night, when he had arrived at the ballet. “Who invited Vasilyev to that performance? He was with my family.”

“Your father, I imagine.”

“Did Dmitri say so?”

She turned to face him. “Does it matter? I have no idea.”

Ruzsky pulled her closer and gently eased her head back onto his shoulder. “No, it doesn’t matter.”

They were silent again. He thought about how quickly she shied away from a discussion of anything personal, and how rapidly she moved from fragile melancholy to prickly defensiveness.

“How long did you tell Pavel you would be?” she asked.

It was after nightfall by the time they neared Petrovo. Maria was fit and a natural horsewoman, but both she and her horse were tiring. They’d rested and fed themselves and the mares at an inn just after lunchtime, and as it had grown darker, their progress had become slower. Ruzsky had expected to be there by eight, but as they stopped at the crest of the hill he checked his pocket watch to discover that it was past nine.

Her skin was pale in the moonlight.

“Are you all right?” he said, reaching out to touch her arm.

“I’m fine.”

“Only another few minutes. We’ll soon be able to see the lights through the trees.” Ruzsky pressed his heels against his horse’s flanks. The path was gentler now, but there were no lights. To begin with, he thought he must have misjudged the point at which he would be able to see the house, but the farther he went, the more unsettled he grew.

For a terrible moment, he wondered if the house was no longer there, if it had been burned down or destroyed in one of the peasant rebellions, and his father had not known how to tell them.

And then he saw a light and began to make out the shape of it, nestled in the corner of the valley. Of course, on every previous occasion he’d arrived here, a welcome had been prepared, every light on, torches burning around the gardens and along the driveway.

28

P etrovo loomed out of the darkness. As Ruzsky reached the beginning of the short driveway, a bank of clouds cleared overhead, and the white facade glimmered in the moonlight.

The house hadn’t changed, though it seemed smaller than he remembered.

Maria came up alongside him. “It’s beautiful.”

For a moment, and to his surprise, Ruzsky felt a twinge of bitterness. All this should have been his.

The drive and hedgerows had been well maintained, but as he dismounted by the big front door, Ruzsky saw, even in the darkness, the results of his family’s neglect. The brass had not been polished, and paint was peeling off the door and windows beside it. Inside, the shutters had been closed and there was no sign of light.

Ruzsky took hold of the knocker and hammered it hard three times.

They waited.

Ruzsky began to walk around the edge of the house.

He stood on the veranda, under the sloping glass roof, looking down to the lake.

Ruzsky walked ten paces backward down the slope, so that he could look up at the house. The shutters on the first floor were closed too, but he could see a light on in the attic.

He ran back around to the front of the house and hammered hard again. “Hello,” he shouted. “It’s me, Sandro!”

He felt like a child, his excitement tinged with fear. He wanted everything to be the same. “Hello!”

He hammered again.

A light came on, peeking through the shutters.

“What is it?” he heard a voice demand.

Ruzsky felt his spirits surging. “Oleg, it’s me, Sandro!”

“Sandro?”

“Yes!”

Ruzsky waited impatiently as the bolts were pulled back inside. He heard the big lock turn. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time and then Oleg stood before him, in his nightgown, a candle in his hand.

They stared at each other.

“Master Sandro?” Oleg took a step closer. “Is it really you?”

There was a moment of hesitation, even awkwardness, and then Sandro walked forward and into Oleg’s arms, the candle tumbling to the floor, the room plunged once more into darkness.

For a former sergeant in the Preobrazhenskys, Oleg was surprisingly slight, but when he stepped back, Ruzsky still saw the steel in his eyes. He bent down, picked up the candle, lit it again, and handed it back. “This is Maria,” he said.

Oleg raised his candle in order to get a better look at her. His face, Ruzsky thought, was thinner and more lined. “Maria?”

“Popova.”

If Oleg knew of her relationship with Dmitri, he gave no sign. “Welcome,” he said.

Ruzsky moved through into the central hallway, and looked up into the shadows of the dome. A wooden staircase gave access to the first-floor gallery, from where he and his brothers had spied on his parents’ guests through the balustrade. Three tattered military banners on long poles hung down from the balcony where an orchestra had sometimes played. All around him, lurking in the darkness, were Ruzsky’s ancestors, grim-faced in military uniform. “Do you think they ever had fun?” Ilusha would always ask when they were standing here.

Ruzsky walked on into the drawing room, which ran the length of the veranda. Oleg and Maria came in behind him, the light from the candle casting flickering shadows across his father’s prized collection of rare and ancient texts. Ruzsky ran his finger along them, disturbing a thick layer of dust.

He touched the leather chair by the door and turned the globe beside his father’s writing desk. Next to it was a bust of Ruzsky’s great-grandfather, who had become ADC to Alexander I and traveled to Paris with him, after Waterloo.

Ruzsky reached the window and pulled back the shutters, allowing the moonlight to stream across bare floorboards. He turned the key, shoved open the glass door ahead of him, and stepped out onto the snow-covered balcony.

Ruzsky slipped his hands into his pockets. He thought of those long summer evenings: Father at his desk, Mother at the piano, the three of them playing on the grass or lying on the veranda, legs swinging against the lilac bushes.