Free Found Wanting by Robert Goddard Page A

forked down a gooey slice of torte. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘this is where Anna’s legal team put up prize witnesses and either licked their wounds or toasted their minor triumphs. I don’t know if Clem stayed here. Depends who was paying his bill, I suppose.’
    ‘And who might’ve been?’ asked Eusden.
    ‘Good question. According to Werner, his father said Nydahl’s testimony was called for after the Danish government turned down a request from the court for access to a document known as the Zahle Dossier. Herluf Zahle was Danish ambassador to Germany when Anna first came forward. King Christian instructed him to establish whether she really was Anastasia. I imagine he was trying to decide what line to take on his aunt Dagmar’s behalf if there was any substance to the claim. Anyway, Zahle seemed to think Anna was the real deal at first. He covered all her medical expenses – she was seriously ill with TB for several years – and helped her out on numerous occasions. He only backed off when the Schanzkowska allegation surfaced in a Berlin newspaper and even then he made it obvious he didn’t believe it. The dossier contained all his papers relating to the case. Crucial material, which the Danes held back. Who knows why? Nydahl was a friend of Zahle’s and the courtier charged with looking after Dagmar’s interests. He must have known what was in the dossier. Hence the attempt to get him to testify. But he pleaded illness, which may have been genuine, since he died the following year. Clem was his chosen substitute. A bizarre choice on the face of it. Strings must have been pulled somewhere, though, to ensure he was heard in camera. Clem obviously was the natural choice. For reasons you and I can only guess at. Werner, on the other hand, will probably know what those reasons were, as soon as he has the letters translated. Unless he’s done a crash course in Danish on the sly and can read them himself, which I wouldn’t put past him.’
    ‘Who’s he meeting off the plane at Frankfurt?’
    ‘An eccentric American millionaire who’s distantly related to Jack Manahan and is prepared to pay through the schnozzle for evidence that Jack’s wife was the true-blue Anastasia.’
    ‘But she can’t have been. The DNA evidence ruled that out. You said so yourself.’
    ‘Ah, Richard, you always were too much of a determinist.’ Marty gave him a benignly superior smile. ‘She can be whatever people persuade themselves to believe she was. The DNA technique they used back in the early nineteen nineties has been discredited now, anyway. It produced far too many false positives and false negatives for comfort. Besides, why trust DNA results which you and I, and everyone else bar a couple of boffins in lab coats, haven’t a hope of understanding over hard physical, visible evidence? Anna Anderson was the wrong height, shoe size, ear size, to be Franziska Schanzkowska, but right for Anastasia. She had a scar on her shoulder exactly where Anastasia had a mole removed. She had the same deformity of the big toe as Anastasia and her sisters. Besides, everyone who met her agreed she was an aristocrat, a difficult trick for a Polish factory worker to pull off. And let’s not get into all the things she knew that only Anastasia could know. A graphologist testified at the trial that there was no doubt Anna’s handwriting and Anastasia’s were those of the same person.’
    ‘Fine. But why didn’t they have the same DNA?’
    ‘How should I know? The excavation of the remains at Ekaterinburg was a suspect business anyway. The authorities had obviously known where they were for years – if not the whole time since 1918 – before they chose to dig them up. And DNA only proved they were Romanovs. It was down to pathologists to say which Romanovs. The Tsar and his family, obviously. But unfortunately they weren’t all there. The Tsarevich and one of his sisters were missing, almost certainly the youngest sister,