I then noticed on the wall in the embrasure of one of the windows of Their Majesties’ room the Empress’s favourite charm, the swastika,[72] which she had put up everywhere to ward off ill-luck. She had drawn it in pencil, and added, underneath, the date, 17/30 April, the day of their incarceration in the house. The same symbol, but without the date, was drawn on the wallpaper, on a level with the bed, occupied doubtless by her or Alexis Nicolaïevitch. But my search was to no purpose, I could not find the slightest clue to their fate.
I went down to the bottom floor, the greater part of which was below the level of the ground. It was with intense emotion that I entered the room in which perhaps--I was still in doubt--they had met their death. Its appearance was sinister beyond expression. The only light filtered through a barred window at the height of a man’s head. The walls and floor showed numerous traces of bullets and bayonet scars. The first glance showed that an odious crime had been perpetrated there and that several people had been done to death. But who? How?
I became convinced that the Czar had perished and, granting that, I could not believe that the Czarina had survived him. At Tobolsk, when Commissary Yakovlef had come to take away the Czar, I had seen her throw herself in where the danger seemed to her greatest. I had seen her, broken-hearted after hours of mental torture, torn desperately between her feelings as a wife and a mother, abandon her sick boy to follow the husband whose life seemed in danger. Yes, it was possible they might have died together, the victims of these brutes. But the children? They too massacred? I could not believe it. My whole being revolted at the idea. And yet everything proved that there had been many victims. Well, then?...
During the following days I continued my investigations in Ekaterinburg and its suburbs--the monastery, everywhere I could hope to find the slightest clue. I saw Father Storojef, who had been the last to conduct religious service in Ipatief’s house, on Sunday, the 14th, two days before the night of terror. He too, alas, had very little hope.
The enquiry proceeded very slowly. It was begun in extremely difficult circumstances, for, between July 17th and 25th the Bolshevik commissaries had had time to efface nearly every trace of their crime. Immediately after the taking of Ekaterinburg by the Whites, the military authorities had surrounded the house with a guard and a judicial enquiry had been opened, but the threads had been so skilfully entangled that it was very difficult to sort them out.