THAT EVENING, AFTER TUCKING NICOLE UP IN BED, Val snuggled next to Bill on the sofa and told him all she had heard from the priest. He was a good listener. It was one of his sterling qualities. She always felt he was interested in what she had to say, in stark contrast to her ex-husband.

“You could argue that my father romanticized the facts years after the event to portray himself in a good light,” she said. “I’m sure he would have been eager to win the priest’s good opinion. But I believe this story because it fits with all the other facts.” She listed them on her fingers. “He went back to get Maria’s bag from the basement, planning to rescue her and make her his wife, and he kept it all those years hoping to find her. He had wedding rings engraved and kept them in her Fabergé box. And it explains what he said to me in the nursing home before he died.”

“What does ‘intimacies’ mean?” Bill asked. “Do you think the old devil actually had sex with a Romanov girl?”

Val screwed up her nose and shook her head in distaste. “You didn’t meet him. I don’t think Maria would have gone that far. These girls were grand duchesses, after all. There had been talk of matching them with foreign princes, while my dad was penniless and had nothing to recommend him. But it sounds as though Maria liked him. Remember it said in the museum that they kept having to sack guards because they got too close to the family?”

Bill agreed, but suggested, “It could have been a case of Stockholm syndrome. Remember those hostages in a bank raid in 1973 who ended up testifying on behalf of their captors? Psychologists reckon that forming attachments to captors is a common coping mechanism.”

Val thought back to the photos developed from the old camera. “Maria photographed three guards. Maybe she was friendly with them all. But she didn’t photograph my father.”

“One of them was Peter Vasnetsov, wasn’t it? The man who rescued her. And your father’s ledgers mentioned letters received by the Vasnetsov family.” He narrowed his eyes in concentration. “I wonder what became of Peter. Did he help Maria to escape overseas? Did he even go with her? If he had gone back to his family home, the authorities would have found him. Your dad would have found him.”

“You’re right.” Val nodded. She went to find the packets of photos and pulled out the one of Peter Vasnetsov. He had an honest, unassuming face, she thought.

“Let’s have another look,” Bill said, and she handed it over. He shook his head. “An unlikely hero. I guess we’ll never know what became of him. I wonder why your father didn’t process these pictures himself.”