Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Warsh, Sylvia Maultash

  Kensington, London

  January 16, 1759

  Your Highness,

  This is in answer to several letters Your Highness kindly sent to Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams and which have hitherto gone unanswered. It is my sad duty to report that Sir Charles is in no condition at present to respond to correspondence of any kind, owing to a debilitating mental condition. Because of this mental derangement, he has been confined to a private house under my care. It is my contention that madness is as manageable as many other disorders and must be approached with understanding.

  I have been told by witnesses that this mental instability first showed itself while Sir Charles was on his way home from your country. He perseveres in talking of his failure in the Russian court, his anxiety over a lost treaty. I relate this, not in any laying of blame, but so that Your Highness may comprehend the irrational state of his mind. Since returning to England his condition worsened until his daughter was forced to give permission for his confinement.

  We have seen some progress, and perhaps with time his mental faculties will improve. Until then, I thank you, on his behalf, for your kind interest. I remain

  Your humble servant,

  Dr. William Batty

  chapter twenty-six

  Rebecca only worked half days on Friday and had gone home at one o’clock, worn out. She didn’t realize how much yesterday’s hostage-taking had fatigued her until the examining room started to swim before her eyes while a patient was showing her his poison ivy rash.

  Once home, she curled up on the couch in her den and finished reading the last chapter she had of The Stolen Princess. She was astonished at how close she felt to these people, her apprehension at the troubling letter from a Dr. William Batty who was treating Sir Charles for a “mental condition.” It occurred to her that Dr. Batty might be the source of the expression used for people with a screw loose.

  What did it all mean? Who was the stolen princess? She tried to remember what Michael had told her about his book. What stuck most in her mind was that something he had written in it contradicted the history books. How would she know what was contradicted if she didn’t know the history in the first place? He told her he was looking for his great-great-great-grandmother. Something like that. And that Stanislaw Poniatowski, who became King of Poland at some point, was the father of her child. It seemed obvious to Rebecca that he was writing about Catherine. Quite a sobering thought, that Michael could be the descendent of Catherine the Great. He said he had checked all the children of the king’s many mistresses and that all the offspring were accounted for. What about his child with Catherine? Rebecca would have remembered if he had mentioned her. Why hadn’t he? There was a conundrum there, and if she could unravel it, maybe she’d be closer to knowing what happened to Michael. Someone had taken the rest of the manuscript to make sure no one figured it out. Was that someone Teodor?

  She dug up Professor Hauer’s card and dialed the number.

  The secretary answered. “Department of Slavic Studies.”

  “Could I speak to Teodor please?”

  “Moment.”

  She heard the secretary shuffle away.

  After a few minutes, a hesitant male voice answered, “Yes?”

  “This is Rebecca Temple. I came to talk to you about Michael Oginski’s manuscript a few days ago…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I’ve had a chance to read it since then and I need to speak to you about it. You remember we only found a hundred and forty pages — the rest are missing. You must know what happens in the end. I think the missing pages might have something to do with his death.”

  She heard an intake of breath. Was she getting close?

  “This is a dangerous business,” he whispered. “I can’t talk now. I can’t talk here. People listen…”

  “Well, what about some place else? Would you like to meet somewhere for coffee?” Some place in public should be safe.

  “I… That is possible.”

  “How about this afternoon?”

  “I’m busy in the office. And tonight I’m busy.”

  “How about tomorrow morning?” Did he suspect?

  He paused, breathed into the phone. “All right.”

  “Eleven okay?”

  “There’s a little café on Spadina just north of Harbord.”

  “What’s it called?”

  The dial tone hummed in her ear. She would find it.

  That evening at her parents’ house she was particularly interested in her mother’s brother, Uncle Henry, whose teaching career she had never given much thought to before. He had remained a bachelor and came to dinner every Friday night, an integral part of the family. He and her mother shared a resemblance around the eyes, which were grey and animated. He was a small but fit man with a round head covered with springs of grey-blond hair. Rebecca waited until he had cut into his roast chicken.

  “I’m reading a story about a young German girl named Sophie who travelled to Russia in 1744 to marry her cousin Karl.”

  “Why aren’t you reading medical texts?” said her father, giving her the fish eye. “What for did I spend all that money sending you to medical school?”

  “Quiet, Mitch,” said Uncle Henry. “It’s a trick question.” He held a forkful of meat near his mouth and flashed a toothy smile. “To which I know the answer. Catherine the Great.” In went the chicken.

  “That’s amazing,” said Rebecca’s mother, Flo. “You must be an awfully good history teacher. Don’t you think so, Mitch?” She passed down a platter filled with broccoli and toasted almonds.

  “‘Awful’ is the right word there,” said her father, unable to resist. Both her mother and uncle had played straight man to Mitch’s routine ever since Rebecca could remember.

  “Have you heard of a Polish king named Poniatowski?”

  He shook his curly head, spearing some roast potatoes with his fork. “I’m on shakier ground there. Poland was always overshadowed by the superpowers around her. Russia. Austria. Germany — or in those days, Prussia. Around the end of that century, if I remember correctly, they carved Poland up like a cake and divided it three ways among themselves: Russia on the east, Prussia on the west, and Austria on the south. Your grandparents came from the Austrian side. That’s why we all had German last names.”

  Rebecca had never thought to ask why her mother’s maiden name, Wagman, was German when her parents, Rebecca’s grandparents, came from Poland.

  “Not all of us had German names,” said her father. “Temple comes from Templitsky. We were from the Russian side. It was a mixed marriage,” he said, smiling mischievously at Flo.

  Rebecca knew the derivation of her last name, but had never understood the context before.

  “Catherine was not good for the Jews,” Uncle Henry continued. “She was the one who created the Pale of Settlement.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” Rebecca said, “but I never understood what it was.”

  “Ah.” He nodded, his grey eyes glinting with implication. “Jews were not considered good for Russia — they were stubborn and wouldn’t assimilate, and when Catherine acquired the eastern chunk of Poland in the partition, she inherited the large population of Jews that lived there. Everyone was afraid the Jews would leave the territory and spread out into Russia. So she decreed that all Jews, Polish and Russian alike, had to settle in the new area. The Pale. As in ‘stake,’ or ‘picket.’ They were especially eager to expel the Jews from cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow and sent them to live in villages in the new part where they couldn’t own land or get higher education.”

  Rebecca felt betrayed, led on by the empathy she had felt for the character in Michael’s story. She remembered the old rabbi’s vision and foreshadowing of evil when Catherine was still Sophie on her way to meet her future husband.

  Uncle Henry chewed on his potatoes, fixing an eye on her. “What’s this sudden interest in European history?”

  Rebecca took that moment to turn to her
mother. “Chicken’s really good tonight, Ma.” She popped a piece in her mouth.

  “Thanks, dear. And I’m glad to see you’re taking an interest in something other than work.”

  “Don’t listen to your mother,” Mitch said, his mouth on an angle. “Medicine is interesting enough. History’s passé.”

  Rebecca acknowledged the joke with a smirk. “But I am curious about a few things, Uncle Henry. For instance, how does history view Catherine?”

  They all turned to Henry, who solemnly put down his fork and adopted his teacher’s face.

  “Catherine is seen as an ambitious, ruthless woman who had her husband murdered so that she could become empress of all the Russias.”

  “Murdered?” Rebecca said. “She didn’t seem to be capable of that in the story I’m reading.”

  “Well, there’s no evidence that she actually gave the order to kill him, but shortly after becoming emperor her husband was put into prison. Catherine’s lover at the time, a popular Russian officer, helped her stage a coup. Once her husband was in prison, it wasn’t long before he was killed. Though she denied it, people always murmured that her lover had done what she asked him to do. But afterwards, she appeared on her horse in a Russian soldier’s uniform and people cheered.”

  “Her husband would’ve been a disastrous ruler,” she said.

  Her uncle smiled. “You have been reading. All in all, Catherine was an excellent empress. She tried to overhaul the whole legal system of Russia. She was sympathetic to the serfs and tried to better their lot, and most important of all, she won a great victory over Turkey in a war she was expected to lose. That was where she acquired her title. After that war Russia was considered one of the great powers.”

  “Did you know she had an affair with the Polish nobleman who became King of Poland? That she had his child?”

  Henry’s mouth pursed while he ruminated. “I don’t know anything about that. It sounds like he was a footnote in her eventful life. And how much could she have cared for him if she made his country disappear?”

  Rebecca recalled the tale the rabbi had told Sophie about the two souls who were eventually torn apart by the woman’s ambition. It was so hard to fathom, the sweep of a life.

  He spooned more potatoes onto his plate. “That’s why history is so fascinating. We live our lives on the tip of an iceberg and only begin to understand why we’re here when we splash around and look below.”

  “Gee, Henry, I never realized you knew so much,” Mitch said. “Maybe you should be a teacher.”

  “Do you know who the Jacobites were, Uncle Henry?”

  “The Jacobites, my dear, were followers of the Catholic King James of Scotland. The word comes from ‘Jacobus,’ the Latin for ‘James.’ His son and grandson were called Pretenders because they tried to take the throne from the reigning monarchs of England. Quite a to-do at the time.”

  Flo gazed at her younger brother with pride.

  “If you’re that interested,” Henry said, “I’ve got some books on the period at home…”

  “Anyone want to hear a joke?” Mitch said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

  “… if you’d like to borrow anything.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Henry. What I’d really like to know is what happened to the child Catherine had with Poniatowski.” That seemed to be the obvious place to look for Michael’s great-great-great-grandmother.

  “Do you remember the kid’s name?”

  “Anna.”

  “I’ll check out my eighteenth-century shelf when I get home. How late can I call you?”

  Rebecca grinned at his enthusiasm. “If you find something, let me know. Whenever.”

  Rebecca glided toward the light in the distance, her gown rustling as she moved, a gossamer silver trimmed with pearls and pink roses. People stepped demurely to a minuet around the high-ceilinged ballroom. Rebecca stopped at the doorway, knowing they would want to bow as she entered the room. Floating across the ballroom, she gave them the opportunity to admire her chestnut hair piled elaborately on top of her head, decorated with jewelled combs and aigrettes, her white skin glowing with rouge.

  A new minuet starts up and Count Poniatowski stands before her, eager to begin the dance. He smiles with soft curved lips, his long hair waved and yellow above straight shoulders. She takes the hand he offers and steps into the music. The floor dazzles with light from crystal chandeliers. The courtiers bow to her as they pass by, sparks flying from their diamonds and gold.

  “I am only sorry our dance ended so soon,” he says.

  Since they have just begun, she wonders at this, but when she looks up into his face, it’s Michael, his blue eyes smiling at her. Her heart lifts and she opens her mouth to frame a question, a thousand questions, but her voice is stuck somewhere in her throat. Then an irksome noise begins.

  A bell rings in her ear. Then his face, her gown, the room melt away. It rings again and she’s awake.

  “Hello.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  Her brain rearranged itself into the present, her bedroom in Toronto, 1979. “It’s okay, Uncle Henry. Did you find something?”

  “Not good news. I looked up my biography of Catherine the Great and she did have a child named Anna by Stanislaw Poniatowski in December 1757. But the child died in the spring of 1759 when she was fourteen months old.”

  “Oh.” Now Rebecca understood why Michael hadn’t counted on the offspring from that side.

  “Catherine didn’t forget him, though,” said Henry. “You piqued my curiosity and I read ahead. Shortly after she became empress, Augustus, the king of Poland, died. He was also Elector of Saxony, but that’s another story. Anyway, there were a few candidates for the job of king, but Catherine sent Russian troops to Warsaw to make sure her ex-lover was chosen. She was the ruling power in those days and the man she chose to be king would become king. It seemed less a personal choice than a political one though. She wanted someone who would do her bidding. And who better than a man still besotted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Poniatowski seems to have gone to his grave loving her.”

  “So first she made him king,” said Rebecca, “and later she took away his kingdom.”

  “Just so.”

  She remembered the rabbi’s story in Michael’s book, the magic grain of wheat that the young man worshipped and the young woman failed to comprehend — Rebecca realized it was Poland.

  A few minutes before eleven in the morning Rebecca found the University Café on Spadina Avenue just north of Harbord. She sat down at a table for two. Then she waited. She drank a cup of decaffeinated coffee. She watched customers come and go. And she waited.

  By 11:30 she decided Teodor was not coming. Maybe he thought he could get her off his back by making an assignation he had no intention of keeping. She wasn’t that easily put off. If he had killed Michael, she would find him. Except that she was at a disadvantage now because she didn’t know his last name. The Slavic Studies office would be closed on Saturday. Just for good measure she called.

  In the phone booth on the corner she listened to the signal ringing, ringing. Then she remembered something Edward had said about Teodor’s last name.

  She dialed Sarah’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Sarah, how are you?”

  “Fine, dear, how are you?”

  “This is going to sound strange but I need to know a word in Polish. The word for green.”

  There was a moment of silence, which Rebecca took to be surprise rather than thought.

  “Zielony. The word for green is zielony.”

  “I’ll explain it some other time. It’s a long story. Could you spell it please?”

  Once she had hung up, Rebecca pulled open the well-thumbed Toronto phone book attached by a chain to the booth. There were only two Zielonys in the book, only one with the initial T. She dialed the number. It rang five times before she pressed down the button and dialed again. Maybe he was on a flight
back to Poland. She recognized his street address; it was just a few blocks away, walking distance to his office. Which made sense. She had to go back that way to her own office where she had left her car. But if he’d killed Michael, she wasn’t going there alone.

  Pushing another dime into the slot, she dialed again.

  “Hi Iris. Are you busy?”

  She walked slowly down Spadina Avenue and took a few side streets until she reached College Street. Hauer may’ve been a pompous clown, but what he said about Teodor rang true. It all fit. Especially now that he was avoiding her.

  She came to a small street that ran south off College. Teodor lived in a low-rise apartment building identical to all the others on the street. Though she had the address, she didn’t have the apartment number. Lucky for her, the names of the tenants were listed on the mailboxes. He was in the basement.

  She hung back in the shadow of a spreading chestnut tree on the corner. Finally, Iris drove up in her silver Pontiac. She parked at a meter on College Street.

  “Did you ring the bell?” Iris asked, her blond hair swept up in waves off her neck. Even in casual khaki trousers and a print blouse she looked tailored. Rebecca had briefed her on the phone and Iris was ready to go.

  She rang the buzzer for the basement. No response. She rang again. Nobody was coming in or out; it was very quiet for a Saturday.

  “Wait here!” Iris said with the same authority that had made her indispensable in the office. She marched around the side of the building in her low-heeled pumps.

  A moment later, Iris called out. Rebecca stepped around the corner and found her assistant grinning as she held the back door open for her. It had been left propped ajar with a piece of wood. Someone must have wanted fresh air.

  They stepped down the linoleum-covered stairs toward Teodor’s apartment. The same linoleum covered the floor of the hallway, worn, but clean. It didn’t look like the home of a killer. But evil was banal, wasn’t it?