Reserved for the Cat

“We are trying to learn where the ship might have gone down, miss,” the officer said in English.

She blinked at him. “My Eenglish, not so good,” she said, and gestured to him gracefully. “Parlez-vous francais?”

“I do,” Arthur spoke up, and turned to the officer. “I’ll be translating; sir, it’s not uncommon for Russians artists to know French, but not English.”

The officer grumbled a little about “foreigners,” but nodded. “All right then, how many were on this yacht?”

“Myself, and Nikolas, and five others,” she said carefully, coached by the cat. “It was a motor yacht. Two of the men took it in turns to steer it. There was one man who was Nikolas’ servant, and the other two did things, took care of the pretty boat, cooked, cleaned. Nikolas had just bought this yacht, and he did not know much about these things, I could tell, but he pretended that he did. I wanted to go to London, but he said, no, no, we must sail all around England that you can see all of it and then decide.”

The officer groaned. “Gentleman yachtsmen. Does she have any idea if he registered at any ports?”

When Arthur translated, she shook her head.

“Probably not then.” The officer sighed. “The name of this vessel then?”

“Yvgenia,” she replied promptly. “Nikolas was alone in the world,” she added, as the cat prompted her. “He did something with speculation . . .” She shrugged. “I never could understand it. He laughed and said that Yvgenia was the name of his mother, who was always happy to see him leave.”

“And how is it that the young lady came to shore?” Now that was a dangerous question and one that Ninette had been hoping would not be asked. She would have to tread very carefully here—

Drop your head, the cat ordered. Don’t look them in the eyes and speak very slowly. You don’t remember a great deal.

She repeated that verbatim in a hesitant voice.

The storm came up suddenly, the cat continued. You were asleep. One of the crew came to wake you, and tell you to get dressed. You had never been on a boat before and you were afraid of the violence of the storm. You tried to make your way to the deck, when there was a great crash and you were thrown into the water. Fortunately you are a strong swimmer, but you could see nothing in the storm. You found a plank to cling to for a while, and you thought you saw lights and began to swim towards them. You were determined to live and that was all you could think of. You remember crawling onto the sand, and that is all.

“She must have wrecked just off the North Pier,” the officer said, and shook his head. “Though why we weren’t alerted—”

“A yacht that small? In a storm like that? With an inexperienced owner?” Arthur exclaimed. “The Lifeboat Service is hardly to blame, sir. No telling if she was even storm-worthy.”

“Well that does account for some flotsam that came ashore,” the officer muttered.

“Really, I cannot imagine anyone holding the Lifeboat Service to account for this. You’ll have to notify the Russian Ambassador of course.” Nigel nodded sagely. “Miss, do you remember the names of the crew?”

“Nikolas Petrov Vladisky,” murmured Ninette, as the cat dictated. “One pilot was Sasha, I do not know his last name. The other was Ivan Bolodenka. Nikolas’s man’s name was Borya Fedorovich. I never knew what the rest were called except their first names, Dimitri and Yuri.”

Now cry, the cat ordered. She was so nervous about being found out that it wasn’t at all hard to do as he ordered and start to sob.

Alarmed, the officer patted her hand clumsily. “There, there, now, miss, you’re a good, brave girl. I’ll let the embassy know these people were lost.”

She looked up, impulsively, and he flinched.

“Let the maid take you back to bed,” Nigel said, beckoning the servant over. She waved the maid away; the girl curtsied and left the room. “No, I shall be all right. Is there any sign of—” She looked up again at the Lifesaving Officer, and he winced.

“Tell her that we probably can’t hold out any hope at this point,” the officer said. “If they wrecked off the North Pier, we probably won’t even find bodies; they’ll be taken out to sea by the tide and turn up in Ireland, if at all.”

Arthur translated the first part of that, but not the last. She dropped her eyes.