“Where else could he go?” she said.
Field felt a sense of despair creeping over him. “The boy, Alexei, went to an orphanage?”
“What about his family?”
The Schmidts looked at each other, shaking their heads.
“Natalya had no family?” Field said. “No one who came to see her, no one the boy could have gone to?”
They shook their heads again.
“Which orphanage?”
Mrs. Schmidt exchanged glances with her husband. “They came in a car . . . there was a nun. I do not know her name. In Shanghai they are all the same.”
“Did he want to come here?” Caprisi asked.
“How could we?”
“We are old,” Hans said. “We are old!”
“It was Otto. He should never have had . . . She was no good for him. Afterwards he could not bear to see the boy.”
“The boy . . . Alexei was his?”
“No!” She shook her head vigorously. “Of course not. My Otto is not like this. He is an honorable man, but the boy reminded him of his love for her and the family they could have had. He could not shake her from his silly head, even before she died.” Mrs. Schmidt looked at her husband, then back at Caprisi. “She was pleasant to us, always friendly. I must say that. But she was—”
“I know.”
“How could our boy be interested in a woman like that?”
“Of course.”
“It was a foolish thing. He had forgotten her, but then . . .”
“Yes.” Caprisi nodded.
She sighed heavily.
“Did Natalya ever . . . entertain . . . people at home?” Caprisi asked.
“Sometimes. Not often, because of the boy. She would go to . . . it is not work. Prostitution is not work.”
“No.” Caprisi cleared his throat. “But men would sometimes come here?”
“Sometimes.”
“During the day? At night?”
“When the boy was at school. Sometimes at night.”
“Was there anyone in particular the last few months before her death?”
Mrs. Schmidt turned to her husband again, seeking his approval. He nodded. “The last month—no, more, two months—there was a change.”
“In her, or the pattern of her behavior?”
“In both. In the day there were no more visitors, but at night I think one man came.”
“You think?”
“She would let him in the side gate, to the yard.”
“Did you see him?”
She shook her head. “From here, we could not see.”
“Never heard his voice?”
“It is too far away.” She clicked her tongue to indicate her frustration.
“And did she talk about him?”
“Yes,” she said, punching the air with her forefinger. “Yes. She was happy, she said, things would get better. She had met a man, a rich man, powerful, and she would be able to get away with Alexei, start again, somewhere new . . . Europe. She asked us where she should go if she were to visit Germany, and what kind of country it was, and if we had ever been to France and England.” She looked at them, suddenly suspicious. “Otto was upset, but it was not serious. He would have got over it, and I said,
“So you never saw this man?”
“No.”
“And you never heard his voice or found out his name?”
