“It would be the politic thing to do, to go where you have been invited by a gentleman of the royal bedchamber. You could make a good entrance if you went now.”
“I have no desire for a romantic entanglement with some lady-in-waiting. Who will next week set her heart on some other gentleman at court. I detest such games.”
“But Count,” say I, “it is not a lady-in-waiting who keeps her eye out for you. It is the Grand Duchess herself.”
He cocks his head at me. “So you have said, dear Sir Charles. But I am sure you exaggerate her interest. She is so far above me I cannot believe she would single me out from such a handsome court.”
“Tell me if I am wrong, dear Count. You have come to Russia under my protection in order to learn about the world?”
He nods politely, a bemused smile on his lips. “And I have nothing but gratitude for…”
“As much as I am fond of gratitude,” I say, “it is results I want. There is work to be done here. And pleasant work it is, too. She is an enchanting woman — you will not suffer there.”
“You are weary of my company,” he says with a sigh.
“It would not hurt to become the friend of a future Tsarina. Even if her husband rules — which I have grave doubts about — she will be the strength behind him.”
“Precisely why she would not interest herself in a lowly Polish nobleman.”
I open my eyes wide to show him my frustration. “You do not give yourself enough credit, dear Count. There is no other young man at court with your intelligence or culture. She spied it immediately. You had best trust my instincts about this. I am the more experienced man and I smell interest. You would do both your country and mine a service to engage her.”
“So you send me to be a diplomat.”
“I do not send, but encourage you. If I were but a little younger I would not consider you at all. But it is you she admires and it is you who must go to Naryshkin’s. And if in the course of your friendship you obtain for your country the sympathy of an empress, I do not see the harm in that.”
chapter twenty
Rebecca stood in the shower trying to wake up. She was entranced by the people Michael had brought to life in his book. As she had been entranced by the writer. Despite the age difference, despite the cultural difference, they had made a connection. Any spare time she had was spent reading his manuscript. She tried to push back the images of death and pictured his blue eyes animated in the restaurant, his arms bringing her close in that restrained embrace on the dark street when she needed consoling. He was simply an extraordinary man. Almost regal with his Old World charm, a gentleman of the old school, yet unpretentious, good-natured. Was that why she couldn’t let it go, the death by misadventure verdict? She seemed to be the only one who questioned it. Tiziano was so blinkered by precedence in the normal scheme of things that he was ready to dismiss the niggling questions of Halina’s disappearance, Simard’s visit, the missing manuscript, the Valium that shouldn’t have been in his body, John Baron’s bruises.
Well maybe when everything was said and done, all those loose ends would fall into line and point the way to accidental death, but until that happened her mind worked the pieces of the puzzle incessantly. As a physician she unraveled the mysteries of her patients’ illnesses daily. Michael’s death was pressing in a different way. She could no longer help him, but she could give him the dignity of the truth.
Before leaving for the office that morning Rebecca phoned the number on Michael’s business card.
“Baron Mines.”
“Could I speak to John Baron please?”
“Hold, please.”
“John Baron’s office.
“Could I speak to John Baron?”
“Mr. Baron’s not taking any calls today,” said a woman’s officious voice.
“I wanted to speak to him about Michael Oginski.”
“He’s not giving any interviews.”
“I just wanted to ask him some questions.”
“He’s not speaking to reporters,” she said with impatience. “All the papers know that by now, so tell everyone to stop calling.”
“I’m not a reporter. My name is Dr. Rebecca Temple. I’ve met him socially.”
“You people will try anything, won’t you?”
The line went dead.
That morning the results of Natalka’s blood tests arrived. They confirmed Rebecca’s preliminary findings. Instead of an elevated count of white blood cells, as she would have expected in chronic leukemia, they were the opposite. Below normal. As were her red blood cells. She was anemic. And her platelets were reduced, which accounted for the nosebleeds that would not stop. Her liver enzymes were mildly elevated, but that was no surprise since her liver was slightly enlarged. She would have to wait for the hematologist’s report. Natalka was seeing him tomorrow.
No wonder her Polish doctor was confused about the diagnosis. Clearly this was a very sick woman, but the waters were muddy. She would pass the information on to Dr. Koboy, who would probably want a bone marrow sample. For now there was nothing more she could do.
Her last patient of the morning left at twelve-fifteen. Rebecca grabbed her shoulder bag and stepped past Iris sitting behind the counter.
“Going for lunch?” Iris asked.
“Got a little errand to do,” she said. “My pager’s on if you need me.”
She drove south heading toward Bay Street. You could barely see the sky between the high rises of the financial district. People were blown along the sidewalks in the wind tunnels created by the corridors of buildings. Parking was scarce but she was lucky and found a spot at a meter that someone was vacating.
In the distance the Baron Mines Building was a dark slab of granite that would have stood proudly on any upscale street in London or New York. It looked as if no expense had been spared. The black stone facing shone in the drab light as if it had just been polished.
She had forgotten about the pickets. In front of the massive glass entry doors about a dozen men in shirtsleeves and baseball caps held up homemade signs and shuffled around in a desultory circle. One of them was Claude Simard. She hoped he wouldn’t see her. His sign read, “Baron Mines is killing us.”
Walking toward them, she gazed at the side of the building: there must have been an entrance other than the front. But a gate built along that wall concealed any means of entry behind it.
She stayed outside the circle of pickets, marching toward the door on an angle, trying not to make eye contact with the miners. She was nearly there.
“Baron Mines doesn’t care,” read the sign closest to her.
“Hey, Doc!” someone yelled. “Shoulda known you were with them.” Claude Simard stepped out of the circle to come closer. “I guess you can’t trust doctors neither. You fooled me all right.”
The men within earshot turned to look at her. She felt her face go hot.
“I’ve never been here before,” she said.
Simard’s large pasty face broke into a bitter smile. “You don’t have to convince me. I don’t care. Tell it to the Judge.” He pointed his index finger to the dishwater sky.
“You’re a religious man then, are you?”
His rheumy eyes watched her. “I know them that’s done evil will be punished. We all get what’s comin’ to us. In the end.”
The man had a knack for issuing statements laden with innuendo. Sounding like threats. What did he mean anyway? Michael got what he deserved because he worked for Baron? Was he threatening her? Maybe it was a confession of guilt. She’d watched him, lean and stooped, trudging along in the circle of pickets; he didn’t appear to have the strength to kill someone. But rage is funny that way; it might deliver strength in the right circumstances.
She felt him watching her back as she stepped through the huge glass doors. Inside was a different world. Marble everywhere. Great speckled slabs of it on the floor. Pillars of marble towered two storeys high. Over the sweeping granite entranceway, in gold block lettering: Baron Mine
s.
Three men in suits stood in a short line in front of her, stopped by a guard.
“Name?” he asked the first person. Scribbled down the information in a notebook. “Suite?”
Rebecca hurriedly read the names of occupants listed in gold on a nearby plaque behind glass. Baron Mines took up the top floors of the twenty-storey building. The rest of the tenants seemed to be financial companies.
Her turn came and she stepped forward.
“Name?”
“Dr. Rebecca Temple.”
The guard glanced at her a moment, wrote it down. “Suite?”
“Lovatt and Prue Investments.”
He nodded and she headed for the bank of elevators. A group of businessmen got off.
“Why don’t you join us at a club?” one of them was saying. “We can have a drink before lunch and…”
She stepped into the elevator. Pressing the button for the twentieth floor, she hoped Baron took a later lunch.
The door opened into the oak-panelled foyer of Baron Mines. A huge chandelier hung from the centre of a high ceiling, its crystal tears sparkling like stars. Rebecca stepped onto the deep red broadloom, the heels of her shoes sinking into the plush. Behind a long marble counter sat a striking young woman. She looked up at Rebecca’s approach, her blond hair sleek against high cheekbones.
“I’d like to see John Baron,” Rebecca said.
The woman looked down at some pages on her desk. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” she said. “But he’ll want to see me. I was a friend of Michael Oginski’s”
The blonde was waiting, unimpressed.
“And I have some news about his daughter,” Rebecca said.
The receptionist lifted an eyebrow. She watched Rebecca, plainly wanting to ask but not daring. Did people know about Natalka?
“Just a moment,” she said. She lifted the receiver and murmured something into the phone.
Replacing the receiver, the gatekeeper said, “Mr. Baron’s secretary will be right out.”
A handsome woman in her thirties appeared, her crisp brown hair styled like the Queen’s. “This way,” she said, and led Rebecca down the hall, a small, peremptory figure in a light blue suit.
They passed a closed door on the right that read, “Michael Oginski.” A lump formed in Rebecca’s throat.
The Queen opened an oak door inscribed with Baron’s name in gold letters. Rebecca followed her further down a short hall. She knocked on an unmarked door. A grumble came from inside, and she pushed the door open, standing aside for Rebecca to enter.
Baron sat eating alone at a round, linen-covered table, surrounded by elegant crockery and crystal glasses. Behind him on the burnished oak panelling hung a huge oil painting, maybe six feet long, of some ancient European battle, in a heavy rococo gold frame. It was quite wonderful. Rebecca was impressed. Until she saw what he was eating, in this private dining room. With his left hand he spooned some baked beans into his mouth, with his right he picked up a piece of wiener and stuffed it in.
He looked up finally, his mouth full of food, and motioned her to the chair opposite him. She sat down, getting a whiff of the red roses arranged in a crystal vase in the centre of the table. He pressed a button on the phone beside him while he chewed.
A waiter in a white jacket appeared instantly. “Yes, sir?”
“Bring another dish for the lady.” He gulped down some beer from the foamy glass in front of him.
“Oh,” Rebecca said with surprise. “Thank you, no.”
“You think it’s not good enough? My chef makes the best beans in Toronto. These aren’t from a can.”
“I’m sure they’re wonderful,” she lied, “but I’ve already eaten.”
“You’ll try some.” Then, “Bring her a dish!” he snapped, dismissing the waiter with a flick of his hand.
He gave her a false, conciliatory smile. “I saw you admiring my painting. It’s the Battle of Grunwald, very famous painting by Matejko. The big one’s in Warsaw in the museum. Takes up a whole room. Magnificent! Matejko did this one first, sort of like practice. Best painter in Poland. Cost me lots of money. You heard of Grunwald?”
She shook her head.
“Most important battle of all time. 1410. But Canadians are ignorant of European history.” He jabbed his fork into the air. “Schools are not teaching. I will tell you about this so you know. For years German knights were spreading across Europe, then they came to Poland, massacring everyone in the towns. This battle,” he pointed over his shoulder, “German Crusaders had black crosses on their chests — I still remember from school, all Polish children learn this — they defeated soldiers all over Europe, their leaders were famous. In the middle you see one on a horse just before the Poles kill him. This was huge battle, maybe a hundred thousand men. Everyone in Europe thought the Germans would win. But the Polish king used his head and defeated them. The Germans,” he squinted at her, “are always killing us.”
“It’s a very impressive painting,” she said. But not to her taste. The dark canvas seethed with men in black armour thrusting swords, a wild confusion of bodies blending into each other beneath the hooves of rearing horses; in the dark green background clouds swirled, dust rose to the mottled sky. It was the stuff of nightmare.
Rebecca fidgeted in her chair. “I wanted to talk to you about Michael Oginski.”
“A fine man,” he said, poking a piece of wiener in his mouth. “The best man I know. A real aristocrat.”
The bruise on his cheek had faded, but she could still see the spotty outline.
“Do you know if he had a problem with depression?”
“Michael? Bah! What’s this about?” He took a gulp of his beer.
“I’m having trouble believing Michael’s death was an accident,” she said, trying to gauge his reaction. “The policeman asked me whether he’d been upset about something. I didn’t know him well enough to say. He thought if Michael had been upset enough, he might deliberately have…” She trailed off, having difficulty putting it into words.
Baron’s thick dark eyebrows angled together. “Ridiculous!” he thundered. He stared at her during a minute when his thoughts seemed elsewhere. “He wouldn’t do that. He was a gentleman. Gentlemen don’t kill themselves like that. If he was going to do it, he’d shoot himself!”
She was appalled but tried to keep it out of her face.
After a light knock on the door, the waiter glided over the red broadloom and placed a dish of wieners and beans in front of her. With a flourish he arranged a white linen napkin on her lap and some silver cutlery on either side of the dish.
“What would the lady like to drink?” he said.
“Water will be fine.”
He stepped toward a corner where an ornate wooden counter stood lined with liquor bottles; he brought her a crystal pitcher of water and a cut crystal glass.
Once the door closed behind the waiter, she continued. “Well then, if he didn’t… kill himself, there are two possibilities left.” She ignored the dish in front of her, though it smelled good. “One, it was a terrible accident. He had a few drinks then decided to go into the pool and maybe he lost his footing… maybe he went under and was too drunk to save himself. Or two,” she paused for effect, “someone killed him.”
He shook his head, the grey hair stiff with pomade. “Who would want to kill him? Try the beans.” He held his beer glass in the air waiting for her to comply.
She hated herself for giving in to a bully, but she needed his cooperation. She lifted a forkful of beans to her lips. They were delicious. A hint of maple syrup.
“Ummm,” she said, nodding her head with approval.
She ate for a minute, hoping to lull him into complacency. He was poking a pinky finger into his ear when she said, “How did you get those bruises?”
“What you talking about?”
“You had very noticeable bruises on your face when I saw you at Michael’s on Saturday.”
His h
ead bobbed slowly as he watched her, the jaw tightening behind the jowls. “I had fight with a miner. They’re animals.”
“One of the miners out front?” He nodded. “Did you call the police?”
He shrugged. “Guy ran away. I wouldn’t recognize him.”
If a miner had hit him, she thought, he would’ve had the cops crawling over the lot of them until the culprit was found.
“What if I told you a neighbour saw your car at Michael’s house Saturday morning?”
“Ridiculous! Lots of cars look like mine.”
“What did you fight about? Why did he hit you?”
His expression didn’t change, but some strategy seemed to shift behind his eyes. “You know, I’m powerful man. You have no right asking questions. What? You think I kill him?”
“Did you?”
He threw his spoon down onto his plate, the clattering against bone china startling in the quiet room. “Pa kref! You don’t know what you talking. I loved him like brother. One from those low-life miners hit me. I come to house first time when you there.”
He played well at indignation but his grammar was slipping.
“Did he fall into the pool while you were there?”
“Now you insulting me,” he said, pushing himself away from the table.
She wasn’t finished with him. “I have some lab results back from your daughter’s tests,” she said.
He stood up, a short stubby man holding his head at a cocky angle. “I don’t have daughter.”
Leaving the plate of beans half eaten, she followed him down the hall toward his office. “Mr. Baron, don’t you want to know how she is?”
“You don’t understand,” he said ahead of her, waving one hand in the air without turning. “She isn’t mine.”
He opened the door to his office and marched in. Since he hadn’t closed the door behind him, she pressed on. The Queen in her blue suit followed Rebecca with her eyes.
Baron disappeared through a further door, also left open. She took this as permission and stepped inside. She was dismayed but not surprised by more oak panelling. A maroon, butter-soft leather sofa. Hunting lodge décor.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 47