Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Warsh, Sylvia Maultash

Tom screws up his eyes for a better look. I must mollify him.

  “Do not agitate yourself further, Tom. He has turned away. Perhaps I was mistaken.”

  In the following days when next the rider appears out my window, I say nothing. The Prince, sitting tall and grand in his saddle, has me in his sights, his brilliant blue eyes flashing danger, but I am resolved to carry on. I will not be threatened in this shameless way by the traitorous Scot. Yet his treachery has sunk to a shocking level, for even on the ship crossing the North Sea to Hamburg, I see him yet astride his tremendous stallion. Only this time he rides the blue waves like a vision from hell, gnashing his teeth to strike fear into me. To be sure he has joined in a pact with the Devil, as well as France, and will be a fearsome enemy.

  It is nearly spring when at last we enter St. Petersburg. The ice yet lies thick in the river, but a clear blue sky sweeps high above the golden spire of the Admiralty. Three of the city’s great avenues radiate outwards from before this historic building, one, Nevsky Prospekt, upon which we travel.

  The driver stops in front of my old mansion. How strange it is to be here again! What memories, both fine and bitter, fight to overtake me. I instruct young Tom to wait with the carriage while I seek out my Lord Keith, who has taken over the house.

  His servant announces my presence and my Lord tumbles out of his study, all amazement. It is mid-afternoon, and I have no doubt awakened him from dozing over some dull papers.

  “I am astounded!” he says, buttoning his waistcoat. “How came you? I have had no news — you are very unexpected!”

  “A fine greeting,” I say, “after such a long journey. I am on a secret mission from the King. There will be no message about it — that is all I can say. How goes the court?”

  “I understood you were not well…”

  “My condition was greatly exaggerated. As you can see, I am quite recovered. What news from the court?”

  My Lord Keith observes me while scratching his bald head. “Very curious,” he says. “As for the court, things are very bad for us. The French hold sway over the Empress and she will not see me. I am welcome only in the Young Court, where the Grand Duchess Catherine is still gracious to me. Sad news there. The little Grand Duchess Anna is deathly ill and is not expected to live.”

  I am shaken to the quick. I think of my own two daughters, now safely grown. “A fate no parent should have to endure.”

  “Her mother is beside herself,” Keith continues, “and laments that she has not been allowed to live with her own children. Now the Empress gives Anna to her mother when it is too late. The French faction uses the illness against us and spreads rumours that the child is poisoned by an English sympathizer.”

  My mouth goes sudden dry. Scales drop from my eyes. This, then, is it. I am astounded that it is laid out in such simple terms. It all hinges on the child. The child has been poisoned by the French, who are using her illness against us. Prince Charles Edward Stuart is behind this, of that I am certain.

  My mind races to concoct a plan. “I must see the Grand Duchess Catherine,” I say to Keith. “You must get a message to her.”

  “It is impossible! You are no longer in an official capacity here.”

  “She would be very vexed if she knew I was here and you didn’t do everything in your power to bring me to her. I was her trusted adviser once. And I have a message from the King.”

  He squints unhappily at me. “Yes, of course.”

  That evening I wait for her by the back door, the one that Count Poniatowski used to tell me about. At the appointed time it creaks open and there she stands, thinner than I recall, sorrow written in the lines of her face. Her shoulders stoop; her hair is undressed.

  She bids me inside, and once in the hall I attempt to bow, but she hurls herself into my arms.

  “Your Highness,” I whisper, patting her back while she sobs on my shoulder.

  “I cannot bear it!” she weeps out the words. “My little baby is dying.”

  “What of the rumour of the poison?”

  She shakes her head. “I cannot say. I can hardly fathom it. That anyone would murder a child! What good does it do anyone?”

  I do not trouble her with my theories. “May I see her?”

  She wipes her tears with a handkerchief. “A letter came from an English doctor. He said you were… unwell.”

  “He said I was mad. But we’re all a little mad, aren’t we? Especially if we have a heart and yet must deal with the world.”

  Her face smoothes into a smile, a hint of the lady I remember. She picks up a candle and leads me down the hall. She opens a darkened room, holding the candle aloft to shed some light. A servant lies asleep near the small bed, where a tiny figure reclines under a coverlet. Little Anna is but fourteen months.

  I approach, standing over the sleeping baby. On a table near the bed, candlelight reflects off the little silver compass I gave the Count when first he had been sent away. I touch it to see if it is real.

  “I keep it here for good luck,” she says. “I thought an angel might use it to find her way and then come and save my poor Anna.”

  I watch the little chest barely rise with each ragged breath. Her eyelids do not move. I feel her forehead. Hot to the touch. The Grand Duchess sobs quietly behind me. I feel powerless. Yet there is something. I have not come all this way to stand by while the treacherous Pretender works his evil. This was why he tried to prevent me, so that I could not be the agent of the child’s salvation. In my mind’s eye I picture the alleyway in the city where stands a little house and inside that house an old man dressed all in black standing by the fire boiling potions. Remember me when the time comes.

  “I am your angel,” I say. “You must let me help her.”

  The Grand Duchess looks up from her handkerchief. “It is too late.”

  “It is only too late when one gives up. There is a physician I know who works miracles.”

  “The court physician is the best in Russia… if he despairs…”

  “You always trusted me, Your Highness. Trust me now.”

  She holds the candle aloft near my face to examine me. My eyes convince her. “I have nothing left to lose,” she says. “We will go at once!”

  “You must stay here,” I say. “I will take the child’s servant.”

  “I insist on coming!” she says.

  I take her hand, as if I am talking to my daughter. “Your Highness, you will be the next Tsarina one day. Perhaps one day soon. If someone is trying to harm the child, think how much more eager they will be to harm you. I will not risk it.”

  She sighs with agitation. “Madame Dembrova,” she says to the woman rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Sir Charles is taking the little Grand Duchess out of the palace. You will accompany them.”

  “Here,” she says to me, “take the compass.” She places it in a pretty gold box that lies nearby. “For luck.”

  chapter twenty-eight

  There it was, laid out before Rebecca like a road map. Only the road in question stretched not through space but through time. The contradiction of written history Michael said he had unearthed. Anna Petrovna, the daughter of Catherine and Poniatowski, didn’t die. Sir Charles must have taken her to the mysterious Jewish doctor, who had somehow saved her. But then why did history record her death? Because her family believed she had died? Because Sir Charles had told them she had died and never took her back? He had made Catherine stay behind. He could presumably have said the baby was dead — there would have been no surprise there — and concocted some story about having to bury her quickly because of the fear of contagion. After all, smallpox was rampant then.

  So Sir Charles had kidnapped her! But why? He was clearly deranged. Had he believed he was saving the child from enemies at court?

  But all that was conjecture. How could she find out, now that Teodor could no longer tell her? She fished the card out of her purse and, on the off chance, dialed the number. It was five o’clock on a Saturday evening. She let i
t ring a few times and was about to hang up when a man’s voice answered.

  “Slavic Studies.”

  “Professor Hauer?”

  “Speaking.”

  His slight accent was not unappealing. “It’s Rebecca Temple. I’m so glad I caught you.”

  “Well, I was just about to phone you. The police called and told me about poor Teodor. They said you found the body.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, I’m sorry it had to be you. It must’ve been a shock. What a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

  “Yes. Well.” What was there to say? “You worked with him. Did he seem despondent enough to take his own life?”

  “He was a very strange young man. I cannot say how despondent one needs to be. I think I mentioned his father also took his own life? I can say he was distressed about his thesis. Which was shaky and not up to standard. Perhaps if he had chosen some other career.”

  She thought of the unfinished letter of praise to Michael. Perhaps that was where the friction lay between the professor and the student, the difference in philosophy.

  “Did the police tell you about the suicide note?”

  “No.”

  “He seems to be confessing to Michael Oginski’s murder.”

  There was a pause. “Good God! Who would’ve thought him capable of such a thing?”

  “I expected to find the rest of Michael’s manuscript in Teodor’s apartment, but there was only one chapter. I was wondering, Professor, if I could ask you about some details in the story. I think I’ve found the discrepancy Michael was talking about, the contradiction of written history.”

  “May I remind you that Count Oginski was writing a book of fiction,” he said, his voice pitched higher with irritation. “So by definition, it is all a contradiction of history.”

  “I disagree, Professor. I think his book is a telling of real history as if it were fiction. The characters and events are historical; he’s just given them back their personalities. He’s written them on a human level and brought out the drama.”

  “My dear Doctor, history is a demanding vocation. It is not like writing a romance novel. One cannot suddenly change the facts when one is so inclined. When the Count presumed to turn an important event upside down, he was no longer writing history, but fiction.”

  “Are you talking about Anna Petrovna, Catherine’s daughter with Poniatowski?”

  “Yes, yes, Doctor,” he said with exasperation. “I see you’ve been doing your homework. The Count spoke to me about this as if he had discovered some new material instead of just conjuring it all up.”

  “You mean the part where Sir Charles saves the baby?”

  “Purely fiction. The history is well documented. The baby died.”

  So the child did survive in the book.

  “Though I do give him credit for his artistic talent — it’s a well-written fabrication.”

  Stubborn man. “What if I told you there is an artifact that might prove otherwise? A compass.”

  “I would say it was another fiction he used to acquire a publishing contract.”

  “He wasn’t that sort of man,” she said, affronted. “And he never saw the compass. He said the story was repeated in his family, that the compass would prove they were descendents of royalty.”

  “Nonsense! The whole thing’s a sham…”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “What do you mean? Seen what?”

  “The little silver sundial with a compass set in it. There’s a box with an inscription in French.”

  Finally, an uncertain pause. “Well, well. Should I believe you?”

  “It’s inscribed to Sophie from Sta.”

  A breath in. Silence while he was thinking. “Even if you’re telling the truth, it doesn’t change anything. A compass is just a compass. Unless… unless you found something else.”

  “Something else? What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Even if you found it, he could’ve planted it. Or had it planted.”

  What was he talking about? “There’s nowhere to put anything in it.”

  “Well, then, you see it’s more fiction. As I said before. The Count told me about… information that the compass would give up. I suppose to tantalize me the way he tantalized his publisher.”

  “What kind of information was he talking about?”

  “I hesitate to say for fear of promulgating a lie.”

  “Did he tell you where to find the… information?”

  Another pause. “I might be able to uncover what was there. But I’d have to see the object for myself.”

  Her turn to hesitate. She remembered every facet of the box and compass. It seemed impossible that anything could be hidden within either piece. She knew she wouldn’t find it on her own.

  “I can show it to you. Tonight.”

  A deep sigh. “Shall I come to your house?”

  She was meeting Iris at the office at seven. Inflicting the story on her again. What would she do without Iris?

  “How about my office? Around seven.”

  She drove to Sarah’s, wondering what she would say to persuade her mother-in-law that there was no harm in taking the compass from the house. To her relief, when she arrived, Sarah was out. Though she had never used it, Rebecca still carried David’s old key to the house he had grown up in.

  She let herself in and immediately went to the piano. Crouching beneath it, she dropped to her knees and felt above her head with her fingers. The box lay just where she had left it, snug in a corner under the keyboard.

  Rebecca drove back down to her office, thankful that Sarah had not come home before she could escape with the compass. She would return it later.

  There was no one in the building on a Saturday night. She arrived a few minutes early and headed for her private office, where she placed the box with the compass in her desk, beside the half-eaten Three Musketeers bar.

  Hauer arrived before Iris. In the quiet building she could hear his footsteps coming up the stairs to her second-floor office.

  She moved into the waiting room just as he came through the door. She had forgotten how large he was. His mouth smiled in the aperture between the neatly clipped moustache and beard. The thick dark hair was tamed with some pomade. He wore the same tweed jacket from the other day.

  “Doctor.” He nodded, his round brown eyes observing her. Under one arm, he carried something in a brown paper bag.

  He pulled out a bottle, held it up for her approval. “Special Gdansk vodka with flakes of real gold. I thought we should have a drink to the memory of poor Teodor, whose family is overseas.”

  She led him into her inner office and went to fetch two drinking glasses from a cupboard above the small fridge.

  He stood in front of her desk, gazing into the bottle, whose contents were clear with tiny flakes of gold settled on the bottom. “This is a Polish speciality produced for hundreds of years in the port of Gdansk.” He poured one glass. “It was a favourite of Augustus the Strong, who was responsible for the grandeur of Dresden. It also helps the digestion.”

  He started pouring the second glass but took that moment to look up at her and spilled some on the desk.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Clumsy of me.”

  She left to get some paper towels from one of the examining rooms. He insisted on cleaning the spill himself. When everything was dry again, she sat down behind her desk. Hauer, seated in front, lifted his glass and waited for her to lift hers.

  “To poor Teodor. Let’s hope he’s happier now.” He took a good swig from his glass.

  She peered at the gold flakes drifting in her glass. So this was Goldwasser. She remembered it from the manuscript. Very pretty. She took a sip. She wasn’t much of a drinker. Vodka usually had to be mixed with something like orange juice to tempt her. But this was different. This took her back to another century.

  “How do you like it?” he asked, downing the rest of his glass.

  She smiled and took a few
more sips. The historical attraction was irresistible. It went down warm.

  “Now, the compass?” he said, sitting forward.

  He didn’t waste any time. She opened the drawer and pulled out the blue velvet bag. His eyes were on her as she placed it on the desk and drew out the gold box.

  He took in a sudden breath. She understood that. Apart from the elaborate carving on the gold, the sides of the box had been fitted with translucent panels of lapis lazuli, a twilight blue. Breathtakingly beautiful. He picked it up and turned it around in his large pink hands. He seemed more interested in the box than the treasure inside. Finally, he lifted the gold lid and picked the compass up from its velvet bed, placing it in one of his palms.

  “Ah,” he said. “Very handsome.”

  He had barely looked at it before he put it down. He turned his attention back to the box, closely examining the inside of the lid. “Yes, here’s the inscription,” he said, as if it were of no account. Then propping the lid open against one hand, he began to press the underside firmly with the fingers of the other.

  “Now just a minute,” she said. “That’s a delicate…”

  Had she heard a tiny click?

  His fingers pulled at something. A thin sheet of gold expanded from the inside of the lid to reveal a hidden compartment. She bent forward for a better look. He drew out a folded piece of yellowed paper.

  “Good God!” she said.

  Carefully he unfolded the thick paper. She jumped up and came around to look over his shoulder. That was when she felt the effect of the vodka, the dizziness. But between the heavy creases of the paper she could make out a letter written in French in a crabbed disturbed hand. Dated November 1, it began, “Ma chère Contesse Oginska.”

  “My French isn’t very good,” she said. “How’s yours?”

  “Exceptional,” he said. “I’ll translate.”

  My dear Countess Oginska,

  I was very saddened to learn of the death of your cousin, Countess Konstancja Poniatowska, the mother of my dear friend, Stanislaw Poniatowski. It has been eight long months since the Countess recruited your generous assistance in the rescue of an heiress of Russia. I trust little Anna Petrovna is well. I had several letters from the Countess informing me that the child is a beauty and thrives in your house. She never failed to thank me for making it possible for her granddaughter to be raised in the Roman church. It was Providence that brought little Anna to you after your own daughter was taken from you by cruel fate.