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often asked when we could go again. At Epiphany, with the help of my nurse—I had so many nurses and governesses, but almost all of them I contrived to make allies against my mother—I sent the Grand Duchess a card. I didn’t know how to make Russian letters, but I used Russian words. She must have been amused, for she replied.”
    â€œNo! In that terrible green ink?”
    â€œBeing a child I took it for granted. She wrote in green ink at first, but later changed to a pale, hard pencil.”
    â€œYou mean she kept it up! She never wrote to anyone if she could help it. The telephone was a way of life to her.”
    â€œNot in my case. I found out when her birthday was and wrote again, but she didn’t answer. Next year I tried once more. There’d been some rumpus among the cousins, and I told her about it, for something to say, and this time she replied telling me that she had enjoyed my letter and if I heard similar stories I must let her know. We are an unimportant branch of the family, but my mother had made it her business to become a sort of nodal point in the network. She did not create scandal, but she processed it and passed it on. I would lie on my stomach and draw in my book and listen, and whenever I heard of one of the cousins doing something characteristic I’d tell myself ‘That might amuse the Grand Duchess,’ and send her a letter. After a while she began to reciprocate. We always wrote in Russian, so it was quite safe, but I know more about your family than you might think, ma’am.”
    He beamed. Louise smiled back, relying on a lifetime of face-control. Did he really not understand what he was telling her?
    â€œGranny wasn’t all that reliable,” she said. “I mean she once told me my grandfather was drowned by the secret service on orders from Lord Halifax to prevent her from becoming Queen and making friends with Hitler and stopping the Second World War.”
    Count Alex nodded. That must be in the letters.
    â€œOh, there’s a lot of noise,” he said.
    â€œAlmost white in her case,” said Piers.
    â€œYes, white Russian noise,” said Count Alex.
    â€œYou’re leaving me out,” said Louise.
    â€œNoise is gibberish from which one attempts to extract a signal,” said Piers. “White noise is pure random gibberish.”
    â€œYes, of course,” said Count Alex. “It was a curious relationship. She let me understand quite soon that she had no wish to see me again. At first, I suspected that she may have been mainly concerned to create mischief for my mother, but if so she misunderstood the relationship, which was … let’s not go into that. Later, when she appreciated how well-placed I was to keep her au fait with émigré affairs, she used me for that, and also as a repository for some of her own spites and spleens. I agree with what you say about her unreliability, but it wasn’t total. Sometimes she would comment on what I had told her and add anecdotes about previous Romanov scandals which I was able to check. The facts she seldom did more than embroider. It was her interpretation of the facts which was grotesque.”
    â€œHave you talked to Aunt Bea? Lady Surbiton, you know?”
    Count Alex laughed aloud.
    â€œShe is a figure of myth to me,” he said. “The Grand Duchess’s letters always ended with a postscript describing her latest persecution of poor Lady Surbiton. She claimed it was necessary to keep Lady Surbiton’s bowels open. Yet I gather Lady Surbiton was devoted to her.”
    â€œShe’s heartbroken,” said Louise.
    â€œIt must have been like one of those marriages—the sort where no one on the outside can understand how the couple make it work.”
    â€œAll marriages are of that nature,” said Piers.
    â€œExcept the ones which really don’t work,” said Louise. “Come and find Aunt Bea. She’s getting a