Mr. Majendie bowed his head. “There could be no question of ignoring it. My dear sir, you know Bright’s Row. You may conceive the painful contrast to me—”

“You went yourself? In person?”

“Princess Karukhin demanded no less,” said Mr. Majendie, looking over the tops of his spectacles. “Of course, I took the precaution to ascertain that the Princess did live there—though she had allowed the title to lapse, naturally.”

“Did you go quite alone?”

“Upon instruction, yes. In any case, I judged it better to make the call in every way inconspicuous. I took a cab to Upper Street and went the rest on foot.”

“She let you in herself?”

“Certainly. You mustn’t imagine that she was enfeebled or bedridden. She appeared in excellent health and vigour, considering her great age.”

“But I understood that she wouldn’t let anyone in unless they knocked in a special way, and called out their name and business.”

“That may be so. I had no such instruction. But then, you see, I was to arrive exactly at three o’clock or not at all. She wrote that she wouldn’t receive me at any other time.”

“So she was expecting you. That would be as good security as a codified knock. She could watch you from the window. She seems to have suffered a morbid fear of discovery and persecution. I suppose if she was hoarding family jewels—”

“My dear sir, she was hoarding a treasure,” said Mr. Majendie impressively. “But I should say she was haunted not by the possibility of losing that, but by the fear of being carried off to Russia. Her son, you know, was shot. Yet in my opinion she didn’t fear death. She hated the new régime so bitterly that she was simply determined to deprive it of further prey in the shape of herself.”

“I should think the régime had enough to do without bothering to hook back the ones that got away,” observed Nightingale. “But as she was accustomed to being a person of the first importance it probably didn’t occur to her that her whereabouts, her very existence, could quickly become a matter of indifference to Red and White alike. Obviously, she had to live in obscurity for her safety immediately after the Revolution, and by the time she came to England the habit of secrecy was hardening into an obsession. I believe she went almost straight to Bright’s Row. That was a pretty unbalanced thing to do. With the sale of some more of her jewels she could have lived in moderate comfort. She could have changed her name for security.”

Mr. Majendie sighed. “Yes, I knew at the time—not where she was living, but that the catastrophe had unsettled her mind. She imposed on us—or me, rather—such tremendous conditions of secrecy concerning the sale of the brooch. Protestations of professional integrity and confidence were not enough, I fear, to reassure her. As for changing her name—pride would forbid, I think.”