“He fell,” Arsov continued. “There were others and I struck again.”
Estanguet turned gray and Agnes wondered if his health was failing. Seeing the body, twenty-four hours of cold, and now this violent story. She considered asking a servant to accompany him to the chateau.
Estanguet gulped the last of his wine and walked toward the windows, turning his back on the conversation.
“Two more died that night in the snow,” continued Arsov, “and I was face-to-face with a fourth. This one had a gun in his hand. Just before I thrust my knife and he fired his weapon, I swore. In Russian. He swore at the same time in English and that is what saved us. A word in German and the next moment would have been my end.”
Agnes shivered, remembering the storm the previous night. She could imagine the whiteout. A fight in blinding conditions. Killing blindly. She rose and walked to stand next to Estanguet. Checking his coloring in her peripheral vision. He looked better.
She breathed on a small glass pane to clear the ice, but it was too thick to melt that way. Although it was impossible to see out, she had walked the property enough to know it now. She could picture the cliff behind them, and the broad flat knuckle of land that gave the chateau and the mansion a panoramic view across the lake south toward France. Old trees, now bent by the weight of ice, trickled out from the base of the cliff, ending in the grove where Felicity Cowell had died. Apart from this grove there was a neatness to the plateau, with the various outbuildings blending in almost too well: summer pavilion, old stables now used as a garage, the ice house, and the Orangerie at the end of the formal gardens. Did Felicity’s assailant cross the lawn from one of these hiding places or was he or she lying in wait? Using the state of the body, and the timing of the arrival of the storm, Blanchard had narrowed the time of death to within about an hour and a half. Agnes had asked Carnet and Petit to talk to everyone again and get a better sense of their activities and of the storm during that period of time. How visible was the grove? Could Felicity even see where she was going? Why didn’t someone see her attacker from the dozens of windows?
“You ran into a regiment of Brits?” Mulholland said behind her. “In the Soviet Union in 1942? Bloody unlikely.”
“Yet the man was British,” said Arsov, “cut off from his company. It was not a fighting unit. Their task was information gathering—spying if caught out of uniform. I came upon him just after he ran into the Germans and he believed I saved him. He was right. He was scouting for information about the movements of the armies, and about supply possibilities of the Russian oil fields, for oil was important to all sides then as now.”
“Shame they stayed allies. Could have ended a bunch of nonsense right then,” Mulholland said.
“Ah, but you needed us as a fighting people just as he needed me that night. We took shelter in a barn, unwilling to risk walking farther in the storm. I had such detail about the situation in Stalingrad that he decided to bring me to their headquarters.”
With a glance at Estanguet, Agnes returned to her seat, wondering why Mulholland was here. He didn’t seem like the neighborly sort. On the other hand, they were all stir-crazy in the aftermath of the storm. She pulled a blanket over her legs, testing to see if she could see her breath. She could.
“Monsieur Mulholland, I am surprised you hadn’t met Mademoiselle Cowell before. In London. Two young people out on the town. She seemed like someone you would know.”
“What does that mean? Someone I would know?”
She looked at him carefully before changing the subject. “I always thought I wanted to live a hundred years ago,” she addressed herself to Arsov, “but this weather makes me think I was wrong.”
“A hundred years ago you would have dressed warmer.” Arsov settled his own blanket higher under his arms. “Even fifty years ago you would have dressed warmer. When I left my village I was fortunate to have my father’s bearskin coat. It is the little things that saved my life.”
“Did you manage to bring money with you?” Mulholland asked, attentive again.
“Money? You think we walked around with our pockets full of coins? What do I tell you?” Arsov called over to his nurse.
“Sew my diamonds into my hems.” She laughed. “As if I have diamonds.”
“Later I wished I had money. That is what they would say after the war, the ones who lived. Carry your wealth with you. Those were the lessons many took away. What I took away was to keep my money in a numbered account in Switzerland.” He laughed a hacking half cough.
“But that came later. I traveled with the British for some weeks. Men at war are strange. They want to hear any news of the outside. News of Stalingrad was of interest, for these soldiers had not seen siege warfare and already we were famous. Because of my father’s work I spoke fluent French and once out of Russia I wanted to join the famous Resistance.”