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FIVE

To Professor Jalish E, Russia

Oxford,

April 5, 1911

Dearest Ja safely? Was the journey frightful? Does this railroad (or is it a factory?) that Uncle William wanted you to look at actually seem to be a safe investment? One hears such horrid reports of Russian inefficiency, and it is a tremendous lot of money – and besides, you kno Uncle Willia, would it be possible for you to look up a few of ues there? I’ve enclosed letters of introduction, but I’m sure at least Dr Harbach should reland; what I a a correspondence with specialists in blood disorders, as I as here (I won’t trouble you with the details, but they seeentlemen would be:

Dr Immanuel Grün, on the Nevsky Prospect,

Dr Wilhelm Harbach, on the Admiralty Prospect,

Dr Emrich Spurzheim, on Karavannaia Street near the Fontanka Canal (or is it a river?),

Dr Benedict Theiss, on Samsonievsky Street,

Dr Richard Bierstadt, on Italianskaia Street, and Dr Johann Leutze, also on the Nevsky Prospect

A Dr Ludwig Spohr has offices on the Tverskaia in Moscow (such names they have!); also in Moscow are Dr Kaspar Manteuffel (on Nikitskaia), Dr Klaus Holderlin (also on Tverskaia), and Dr Reinhold Preuze (whose direction I could not find, but I believe it is in Moscow also) Two others – Dr Richard Franck and Dr E worked in Russia in the past, but I can find nonow

All are specialists in blood chemistry I hope you can find one of them, at least, who shares your interests in folklore!

And good luck with Uncle William’s factory (or is it a railroad?)

All ray violence against the study s Lydia sealed the envelope, dug through the frothy chaos of her desk drawer for a stamp (so THAT’S where I put those notes about nervous lesions!), then settled back in her chair, looking out at the wet-dark wall of the New College, at two youngalong Holywell Street like outsize black leaves

Thinking about Don Sio up to her bedroom and sort all those issues of Lancet, the British Journal of Medicine, Le Journal Francais Physiochemique and several German and American periodicals back into their respective boxes for Mick to return to the attic Knew she should re-copy into afor the past three days, almost non-stop, on all those articles by Ger in Russia But she didn’t She didn’tthe street: clip-clip-clip A woust of wind, her other hand fir that of a wrapped and cloaked and scarved and booted little boy Lydia closed her eyes, took off her spectacles, wondered if the child she had lost last year would have been a girl or a boy

Don’t think of that It wasn’thandfuls of rain at theagain

Don Simon

Not that, either

It is only fascination

He said so hie of her nose

Vao down a dark alley with a coht?

The sensation she had of breathlessness – of piercing grief – at the recollection of those calm yellow eyes, that soft voice and the cold touch of his hand, were no er that had ended in tragedy

Like Jamie, she would not be drawn back

For Jamie, it was different He had sickened at the Department’s deceit, at its demand that he hold himself ready to harm anyone who caood at what he did She had never felt sure of her footing in the va was right or wrong

In the Department, Jamie said, it was always very clear You had to keep yourself alive by whateverhad been safely turned over to your chiefs You didn’t look past that It hy so ine living in any other fashion

‘You always have to be seen to be going where you’re going for a reason,’ he had explained to her once: the reason that she had surrounded her list of Gere about Uncle William’s fictitious Russian railway investments In Russia, everyone’s letters were opened by the Secret Police, and no one thought anything about it ‘Nine people out of ten aren’t going to ask the letters froo when he disappears like that? But that tenth person – or whoever he or she talks to – is the one who can get you killed’

Get you killed

Jamie

That had been back in the days when she’d been a schoolgirl, visiting her uncle in Oxford and playing croquet with a s with barely-concealed ihby Fortune to be brought ‘out’ so one or another of them could marry her and it

And with one of her uncle’s scholastic colleagues, who turned out not to be nearly the dry ed acade with hi notes of his journeys and destinations, and co theotten up the nerve to ask hirass by the river, ‘Professor Asherare you a spy?’

His eyes, when he’d looked swiftly sidelong at her – such surprisingly bright brown eyes – had registered no surprise

It was then – or maybe she’d known it already – that she’d understood that she loved hiirl, but as the woman she only just realized she would one day become

Don Simon

‘Ma’am?’ Ellen stood in the study doorway, a tray in her hands ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea, ma’am You didn’t so much as touch your lunch’

‘I’m so sorry’ Lydia smiled, put her spectacles back on, and looked around rather vaguely for space on the desk

Ellen carried the tray to the occasional table by the fireplace, perrin of her own She’d been the nursery ood portion of her life since that tih a morass of books, papers, journals, discarded social invitations and et her to reo to bed on time

‘Now, don’t you worry, ma’am’ Ellen knelt to stir up the blaze – which, Lydia beca through the last of the information to prepare her report ‘You know Mr James’s starts He’ll find this cousin of his, never fear’ That was the story they had given her It had had to be a good one, for Asher to leave this close to the end of term ‘No need to starve and worry yourself into a thread paper’

‘No,’ agreed Lydia ‘Of course not’