VAL’S KNOWLEDGE OF THE ROMANOVS WAS SKETCHY, SO SHE borrowed more books from the library and began to read about them. She was surprised to hear that although it was generally assumed they had all been executed, the Bolshevik government had only ever admitted killing Tsar Nicholas, claiming that the others had been moved to a place of safety. Could they still be alive? Alexandra would have been a hundred and two years old, so that seemed unlikely, but the children would be in their seventies. A White Army investigator by the name of Nikolai Sokolov had found some fragments in a forest near Ekaterinburg that he believed showed they were all killed: spectacles, a shoe buckle, a finger, the bones of a small dog. He theorized that their bodies had been dissolved in sulfuric acid and that explained why their remains had never been found. It was a grotesque thought.

Once she felt sure of the basics, Val went to the university’s Russian department and showed the photos to one of the lecturers, a tall man called Bill Koskov. He was about her own age, with unruly brown hair, and arms and legs that seemed too long for his body. She told him her theory and he looked thoughtful as he pored over the photographs.

“You might be right,” he said. “I know a New York historian who has written about the family, so with your permission I’ll fax him. No doubt he’ll want to see the pictures, so we should get another set of prints made.”

“Which historian?” Val asked, and was thrilled to hear it was a professor whose book she had read. She was even more thrilled the next day when Bill stopped at reception to say the professor wanted to speak to her himself. He was going to ring around twelve noon.

When the call came through, Val described the circumstances of her finding the camera and added, “I read in your book that in the days after the Romanovs were taken from the Ipatiev House, local people wandered in and helped themselves to souvenirs. I wondered if that was how my father got the camera.”

“He must have been an early visitor,” the professor said. “I’m sure it would have been one of the first items to go.”

That evening, she described the conversation to Peggy and her friends. “He spoke to me as if I was a fellow academic. Imagine if he found out that I never even got my high-school diploma!”

“Why don’t you do a night-school degree?” Sandra asked. “They accepted me for the archeology class so they can’t be fussy about qualifications. It’s different when you’re what they insultingly call a ‘mature student.’”