Olga Popova – Susan Breen

Olga Popova is a clever story that well deserved to win this year’s CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition. The three judges – Margaret Cone, Lesley Simpson and myself – disagreed about some stories but we all admired this one. Olga is a fascinating woman who always has a considered reason for her actions, however extraordinary. The narrator, another kind of woman, endears herself continually to the reader and comes to understand both what might have happened and what actually did. Read and enjoy. B.P.

Not that Vera would admit this to anyone, but her chief pleasure in life had become arguing with her aide, Olga Popova. It was better than sex, as far as she could recall. Her husband had been an unmoving man. When he left her for one of his teaching assistants, she was irritated, but philosophical. This was old age. Decline, fall, death. Was she better than anyone else?

Then came the further humiliation of requiring an aide. Arthritis. That or a home, her daughter said. Her daughter whom she adored, but who was on a six-year archeological expedition in Malawi.

So three weeks ago, Olga Popova came to stay in Vera’s ramshackle home in the woods on Cape Cod. A sort of Mary Poppins, but in Slavic form. Hulking in her dimensions, but vastly entertaining.

Because the remarkable thing about Olga Popova was that she lied about everything. If lying were an Olympic sport, she could have captained the team. She came from Moldova, a small land-locked country with one of the poorest economies in Europe. Vera imagined the whole declining population of Moldova in a continuous state of eruption.

Olga could look at a woodpecker and pronounce it the national bird of Moldova.

“That’s not so. I looked it up. Moldova doesn’t have a national bird.”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Wikipedia, you know everything, you Americans and your eagles. But what do you know about Moldova and its birds?”

Vera had come to be worn down by the truth, which was that she was an old woman without much money. So, she came to enjoy Olga’s lies. Why not?

Olga loved true crime. Since her arrival, Vera’s house had blistered with the sounds of gunfire and police sirens and screaming. She noticed her neighbors looking at her, but Olga insisted on keeping the windows open to breathe in the September air, and Vera did feel a bit thrilled at their disapproval. She had always been a proper woman. A woman people approved of, but where did that get you?

They were watching a show about Siamese twins who tried to kill each other when a report came on about a murder on Cape Cod. Vera and Olga bristled to attention. Usually, the crimes were in the Midwest or L.A. It was Olga’s dream to go to L.A. and find some of the directors who had once led Moldova’s vibrant film community, or so she said. Vera had never heard of the Moldovan film community. They argued about that for a while. Had any Moldovan won an Oscar?

Then the picture of Vera’s husband came up on the screen.

“Elderly man stabbed,” the announcer said. Ha, Vera thought. How Warren would have hated being described as elderly.

“Warren Wilson Sedgwick was a long-time resident of Truro, a quaint waterfront community on Cape Cod. He was stabbed fifteen times.” They showed the house, Vera’s house, that he had taken from her in the divorce. A weathered mansion that sat proudly on a bluff looking straight across to Provincetown. Surrounded by shrub roses and a vast sloping lawn that Vera used to roll down when she was a girl. With Cooper O’Doyle. The love of her youth, a giant red-haired boy whom she hadn’t married, but should have. Sometimes she felt like she trailed poor decisions.

“He was a respected college professor in Boston,” the announcer intoned, “but he’d recently retired to spend more time in Truro. His wife was not home at the time, but was in Los Angeles.” They showed a picture of his wife. Holding his hand. You could see the flash of the engagement ring. Foolish man, Vera thought, with that foolish grin on his face. Once so young and handsome. She’d felt like she owned the world back then. They had a favorite restaurant they used to go to every Friday night. Same table. They’d have it all set up for them. His Manhattan, her gin and tonic. They belonged there. They belonged to each other. She belonged to her house.

“The police have not announced any suspects yet, but they say the nature of the crime suggests someone who had a personal hatred for the man.”

“You’re in trouble now,” Olga said.

“Me? Why should I be in trouble?”

“Because you hated him. You have a motive.” Olga’s nails were maroon today. She changed their color every day. She bored easily.

Vera held up her hands. Bent and painful. Her wedding ring tight as a noose. “And how would I have killed him with these?”

Olga shrugged. “With a sharp enough knife, you can do anything. You could hold it with your teeth.”

“You are suggesting that I attacked my elderly husband with a knife in my teeth.” Vera reared back a bit, assuming a look Cooper O’Doyle had always described as patrician, though Olga was not impressed. She had survived the Cossacks; she would not be daunted by the Pilgrims.

“You are not so bad,” Olga said. “You can still drive.”

That startled Vera. She hadn’t realized Olga knew.

“You drove last night,” Olga went on.

Through the window, Vera looked out at a bramble of hawthorns, brown for the season. No view of the seashore. No sound of the sea. Enclosed in this house like a very old fairy princess.

She hadn’t realized Olga was awake last night.

The police showed up soon thereafter. One big man and one big woman, both of whom looked completely out of place in Vera’s small house. She watched them look toward the window, felt their disappointment at a view so unexpansive. The chair by the window, the telescope. All the books crushed together. It looked so cluttered. She had been raised not to apologize, and she didn’t.

But she wanted to tell them that she’d grown up in the big house on the hill. That her father had been one of the great men of Truro. That he’d had a cannon on his front lawn and every sunset he’d fired it in the direction of the bay. Of Provincetown. That he smelled of whiskey and ink, a smell she came to associate with men and manliness, which might have been the reason she married Warren, who did, in his prime, have an air of confidence about him that made her think she would always be protected, though as it happened, the only person she needed protecting from was Warren.

“When was the last time you saw Mr. Sedgwick?”

“I saw him last night,” she said. “I like to drive out to my old house some nights.”

She’d taken the trouble to dress for this occasion. Put on the slacks and silk shirt that Warren once told her made her look like Katharine Hepburn.

“I didn’t talk to him,” Vera went on, “but I could see him standing in the kitchen window.” The new wife hadn’t changed any of the decorations, which she’d found irritating. Same blue flatware lined up against the walls, same paintings of dogs and ducks. The antique map of Cape Cod they’d bought at a flea market in Barnstable.

“Why didn’t you talk to him? If you’d gone up there?” the police officer asked.

“I didn’t want to talk to him. I just like to go up there and listen to the water.” And think about Cooper O’Doyle, she thought, but did not say. The lover of her youth. A man she’d happened to run into a few weeks ago, at a Tedesco. Still strong, still with a full head of red hair. He’d hugged her and she’d felt a spark at his touch that stunned her.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him, dreaming about him.

This she had told no one, not even Olga, who was expert in wheedling information out of her, who had dredged from her all the hoary details of her relationship with Warren.

“Did you go to the window?”

“Why shouldn’t she go to the window,” Olga said. “It was her window and he took it from her.”

“Was he with anyone?”

“Certainly no one with a knife,” Vera said.  Olga laughed at that, but not the police.

Vera recalibrated. “He seemed to be yelling at someone,” she said. “I just assumed it was Alexa. That Amazon thing.” That was the sort of man he was. He liked to demean people. Even appliances.

“You didn’t go inside? To talk to him?”

“No.”

“I can vouch for her,” Olga said. “I followed her in my car. She did not go inside.”

“You were both up there?” the police officer asked. “At the same time?”

Vera didn’t blame him for sounding incredulous. She was astounded herself. She couldn’t believe Olga followed her. She hadn’t seen her or heard her, but she hadn’t been looking behind her. Still, you would have thought she’d have noticed her lights. But then Olga often talked about life in Moldova, the need for secrecy and caution. Secret police. Illicit meetings. She might have surveillance skills. Or she might just be lying.

“I was worried about her. I heard her leave. I didn’t like to think of Mrs. Sedgwick driving around by herself and so I followed her. She did not go inside.”

“Did you see anything else?” the police officer asked.

Olga seemed to consider, and then she spoke. “I saw a man run by. About 6 feet tall, dressed in black, wearing a mask.”

“Who are you?” the police officer asked.

“I am Olga Popova. I am Mrs. Sedgwick’s aide.”

“You Russian?”

“No,” she cried out. “We are Moldovan, we are against the Russians.”

“Everyone is against the Russians now,” the female police officer said.

“Did you know Mr. Sedgwick?”

“No, I know only what Mrs. Sedgwick tells me, that he is an evil man.”

“That’s what she said, hey?” For the first time the police officer gave Vera his full attention. “You thought your husband was evil?”

Vera remembered when her husband told her he was leaving. It was their anniversary, which he’d forgotten, which he seemed to think of as a sort of excuse. If I’d remembered our anniversary, I wouldn’t have chosen to leave you on this day. That was his idea of comfort.

“No,” Vera said. “I didn’t think he was evil. I thought he was a narcissist.”

“Narcissist? That’s with two esses,” the male police man said to his partner.

“Actually, three,” Vera snapped back.

The police officer turned his attention back to Olga.

“So there you are, in the dark, and you see a man go by?”

“That’s right.”

“And you didn’t do anything?”

“Why should I do anything? He wasn’t anything to me.”

The police officer looked at her.

“This isn’t a game,” he said to Olga.

Vera remembered the look at the look on Warren’s face when he’d seen her through the window. She hadn’t intended to approach him. She really had gone up there to look at the stars, and daydream, but when she saw his face, she’d felt drawn to him. She wanted to understand.

She didn’t think he’d notice her, in the dark. So she was shocked when Warren jolted to attention and looked at her with terror. Shocked and slightly pleased. For so long he’d stared at her with contempt and it gave her pleasure to see him look frightened. But now she wondered if he’d been looking at her at all. Had someone been standing behind her?

“Of course, this is not a game,” Olga shot back. “A man has been brutally murdered. Most likely by his unnatural wife. “

“She’s in Los Angeles now,” the police officer said.

“People come back from Los Angeles.”

“You know her?”

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“You know Warren’s wife?” Vera said to Olga, after the police had left.

“I know her kind.”

Vera’s daughter was the one who sent Olga her way. A friend of a friend had recommended her. Vera adored her daughter, though she had to acknowledge that Emily was not that attentive. She took after her father in that respect. She looked for what was expedient. However, when she came up with this aide, who seemed so energetic, and more to the point so cheap, Vera had not thought to question her. She was desperate to avoid being put in assisted living. Olga was her best option.

“Are you related to her?”

Olga sighed dramatically. “We have to find that man in black. He is the only thing that stands between you and death.”

“There is no capital punishment in Massachusetts” Vera said.

“He stabbed him fifteen times. Would you want him coming after you?”

And that was the one indisputable fact. The one thing even Olga could not be lying about. Someone had stabbed Warren fifteen times. Vera knew from all the true crime shows they watched that that was a crime of passion. That was born of hatred. Who could hate Warren like that? There was only one person Vera knew of and it was herself.

“Tell me about this man you saw,” she said to Olga, though she didn’t believe for a moment that Olga had really seen anyone.

“There was something that crackled about him. As though he were electric. He had red hair.”

“Red hair? How could you see that in the dark?”

“Because I have been trained to see in the dark.”

Vera’s bed was too large for her bedroom. It had taken the movers half a day to cram it in and she suspected no one would ever get it out, but she loved it. It had been her parents’ bed and then her own, the one part of the house she’d been able to wrest from Warren’s grasp. She’d loved lying in that bed when she was a girl, reading books and listening to the sound of the waves. The early morning call of the lobster men. The strange pastel lights that pulsed in the sky. Sometimes she liked to imagine Cooper there in bed with her, her head resting on his chest, his arms around her.

Could he have killed Warren?

She knew he hated Warren. How he’d warned her all those years ago not to marry him.  How angry he’d been when she saw him at Tedesco. That Warren had taken her house from her.  How bright his face had flushed.

But would he go stab him? Fifteen times? Was there that sort of darkness inside him?

If this man committed murder for her, she had to know.

She’d walked into a marriage with one man who had darkness inside him and she’d done it innocently. Or blindly. If she did it again, it would be with knowing.

Vera walked into Olga’s room, which had once been someone’s sewing room. Little straw baskets everywhere. Walls papered in a quilt pattern. The effect was dizzying and up until Olga arrived, Vera never went in there.

Now Olga looked up at her from a Barcalounger that she had tipped back as far as it could go. She clutched a paperback volume of Anna Karenina. She blew her nose noisily when Vera walked in. Normally Olga wore a lot of make-up. Without it, she looked more vulnerable. She was just a burly young woman from Moldova, Vera thought. Probably.

“Why did this Anna Karenina have to kill herself? Why couldn’t she fight back?”

“I think I know who the red-haired man is,” Vera said.

“Ahhh,” Olga crooned. “Your Vronsky. But you will not throw yourself in front of a train.”

“His name is Cooper O’Doyle.”

“You love him and he loves you. I saw it at your face at Tedesco.”

How had she thought to keep any secret from Olga? She was like a hawk.

“I want to talk to him.”

“Of course,” Vera said. “Sex, finally.”

Vera laughed, though a part of her throbbed.

Cooper lived in one of those condos on the water. Neighbors to the right and left, but an expansive view in front. It wasn’t a big place, but it was tidy. Comfortable. Like Cooper himself.

Except that Cooper didn’t seem quite right. He seemed unsteady. And she felt unsteady herself. What could she say to him? Did you murder Warren for me?

She wanted to run, but there was Olga by the door, and anyway, she didn’t want to run. She wanted to know.

Vera grabbed onto Cooper’s hand. She’d never touched him before, not with intent. She’d leaned against him. Rested her head against his chest. But never had she reached for him.

“Olga says she saw a man who looked like you up at the house that night. Was it you?”

She expected him to proclaim his innocence. She was so sure.

But instead, he guided her hand to his heart. “I was there. And I would have killed him. But he was dead when I got inside.”

Vera’s house felt unfamiliar when they got home. She could see the outlines of her furniture and the red light on her stove. She felt like she could see movement out of the corner of her eye. Maybe the curtains were blowing, though she was sure the windows were closed. Only now did she realize what she had done.

“I didn’t mean to tell him that you were the one who’d seen him. It just burst out of me.”

Olga didn’t respond, which was a first. Olga responded to everything. She must be angry.

She must be terrified. If Cooper was the killer, then Vera had just told him the name of the one person who could identify him. She’d just put Olga’s life at risk. The one time in her life she’d opened her mouth to protest, to demand, and it might cost someone her life. Someone she loved, because unlikely as it was, she had come to love her Moldovan aide. Who had jolted her out of her long depression. Who had brought her life and friendship.

So later that night, Vera crept out of her bed and went to Olga’s room.

“I think you should leave,” she said. “I don’t think you’re safe here.”

“What will you do?”

“I will take care of myself.”

Olga looked like her face was boiling. She leapt at Vera and hugged her so tightly her rib cracked.

The next morning, she was gone.

Vera missed the sound of the TV and Olga’s mayhem, and yet she felt calm in a way she hadn’t for a long time. She felt ready to think about her future. She had enough money to buy a small place on the beach. Her hands hurt, but she could figure it out.

That afternoon she called her daughter, who, to her amazement, answered the phone on the first ring.

“I’m coming for the funeral,” she said, which surprised Vera. She’d thought Emily and Warren estranged.

“We were,” her daughter said, “but he’d reached out to me lately. Matter of fact, ma, I’m embarrassed to say this. But he’s the one who recommended Olga. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you wouldn’t want her if she came on dad’s recommendation and she was so perfect. I think he really was trying to be a better person.”

Was it possible that her manipulative ex-husband had a sudden change of heart and decided to help Vera by paying to get her an aide from Moldova.

No.

Vera went into Olga’s rooms. Searching for clues. She’d left behind almost everything.

Her clothes. Her books. It was as though she was shedding a skin. But she found no connection to Warren.

She decided to drive over to her old house. Or Warren’s house, as she now thought of it. He’d made it his by dying there.

Vera sat there, in the driveway, staring at the kitchen window. She kept seeing Warren’s terrified face. He must have seen his killer.  She was sure of that, and yet she felt sure it wasn’t Cooper. Because Warren wouldn’t have been afraid of Cooper. He thought him weak.

Fifteen stab wounds. So over-the-top.

And suddenly she knew. Who was the one over-the-top person who had made it clear from the start that she’d been up there that night?

But why would Olga kill him?

Warren arranged for Olga to live with Vera, that she knew. Had he wanted her to kill Vera? That made much more sense than Warren becoming a good person. But why? But then why had he taken her house? Because he could. Because he was a destroyer. And so Olga had erupted onto the scene, ready to kill Vera. Yet for someone reason she hadn’t.

Because they became friends? Was it that simple? Had Olga killed him simply to protect Vera?

No wonder Warren looked terrified when he saw justice swooping down on him.

A shooting star soared overhead. A sign. From Olga? A gift? A warning?

You just don’t know what’s going to save your life.

“I will seize my life,” Vera promised.

The End

Susan Breen writes:

I’m a New York-based teacher, short-story writer and novelist. My new novel, MERRY, will be published in Fall 2025. Most of my mystery stories have been published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

I’m especially fond of stories that feature unlikely alliances, so when the idea of the prim Vera Sedgwick and the ebullient and mendacious Olga Popova came to me I felt I had something special. I could hear them talking. They made me laugh.

I set the story in Truro, Massachusetts because it’s a place that I love, but also, it’s a secretive sort of town with houses tucked out of the way. I did once know a man who had a cannon and liked to shoot cannon balls into the Bay. But everything else I made up. I am so honored to have won the Margery Allingham award.