Read Ebook: Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723. by Phillimore Lucy

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II AN INFAMOUS FEMALE POISONER 17

V MADAME RACHEL, THE BEAUTY SPECIALIST 63

VI THE MONTE CARLO TRUNK MURDERESS 79

X THE BOOTMAKER'S ROYAL WOOING 135

XX THE SECRET PRINCESS OF POSEN 275

FACING PAGE

MARIE TARNOWSKA ENTERING THE COURTHOUSE AT VENICE 14

"MADAME RACHEL" 64

MRS. CHADWICK 160

JAMES GREENACRE AND SARAH GALE 182

WILLIAM PARSONS 244

ADAM WORTH 260

James Greenacre, was the subject of more than one pamphlet biography, but I have preferred to go to the copious reports of his trial for my material, and I consulted similar sources whenever possible before writing the chapters dealing with Marie Tarnowska, Mrs. Leroy Chadwick, Jeanne Daniloff, three of my German criminals and several others. Greenacre's trial and execution were conducted on typical early nineteenth century lines, and that loathsome scoundrel was nearly elevated to the pinnacle of a hero by indiscriminate publicity. The competition to be present in Court when he was in the dock was so keen that a pound a head was charged for admission to the gallery on each day and even at that price the queue was always greater than the accommodation. After his conviction he was visited in prison by scores of "noblemen and gentlemen," and while in a contemporary account of the execution--which I quote--the reporter omits the names of those eminent persons who attended it, it is significant that the number of private carriages, according to another journalist, should have exceeded fifty.

REMARKABLE ROGUES

A RUSSIAN DELILAH

In the land of the steppes, girls develop quickly, and although Marie was very young in years she was a fully-matured beauty, tall, with fine features, a beautiful complexion, a divine voice, and enough charm for half a dozen ordinary women.

No wonder the men were in love with her--she captured all hearts with her beautiful face and her musical voice--and when she had to be told of the proposals her father informed her that she could choose between the prince and the baron, for he disapproved of the count.

"I should love to be a princess," Marie cried romantically.

Old Count O'Rourke, a typical Russian nobleman, who was descended from an Irish soldier, was gratified.

"I am happy to hear you say so," he exclaimed, and kissed her.

A year later Marie eloped with the count, the one man of the three she had been warned against.

It was the beginning of a series of tragedies for the extraordinary girl, who became an even more extraordinary woman. Her father promptly closed his doors against her once she was the Countess Tarnowska. Marie declared that she did not care, adding that her husband was the most perfect lover in the world and she was the happiest wife that ever lived. But within six months she had changed her mind.

"God help me!" she murmured to a consoling friend. "I did not know there could be so much sorrow in the world." For in that short time she had discovered that Vassili Tarnowska was a libertine and that she was only one of many women he had professed to love.

From that moment Marie became a different creature. Always high-spirited and highly-strung, she only required a feeling of injustice to influence her to take to the path that leads to perdition.

Her husband neglected her, and she could not bear to be alone. Other men flocked round her and talked lyrically of her exquisite beauty. The neglected wife eagerly welcomed these compliments. Of course she and her husband, as members of the Russian aristocracy, had to maintain outwardly an appearance of perfect amity, but they were rapidly drifting apart, and tragedy was hovering over them all the time.

What would have happened had Marie found a strong and loving husband one can only conjecture. That she was born with a "kink" in her brain is evident. She has since confessed to that, and more than one specialist has recorded that she inherited disease as well as life from her parents and that she was not always responsible for her actions. But it has to be admitted that when she began to carve out a career for herself independently of her husband and children she permitted no scruple, no sense of honour, and no decency to interfere with her in her mad pursuit of pleasure.

The first of her victims was her husband's brother. Peter Tarnowska was a quiet, intellectual youth with a great reverence for womenfolk. He admired his sister-in-law, and was under the impression that Vassili was devoted to her. His amazement was, therefore, all the greater when, happening to call unexpectedly, he saw Marie with tear-stained eyes sitting in desolate loneliness. As a result of that interview Peter Tarnowska knew that he had found his ideal, but, of course, he was too late. She was another man's, and that man was his brother.

Vassili Tarnowska, who prided himself on his taste, was in the habit of haunting night restaurants with beauties of questionable antecedents, and he was presiding at a banquet in a restaurant in Kieff when he was startled to see his wife enter with a man. She was beautifully dressed, and she looked so happy that he thought her the loveliest woman there. The realization made him jealous, and Tarnowska, who did not want his wife until others showed their appreciation of her beauty and wit, now came back to her, and at once was the most jealous of husbands.

Had Marie been wise she would have seized the opportunity to atone for the past and make her future happiness certain. She had two pretty children, and Tarnowska was evidently determined to do his duty by them all, but the countess had already gone too far to wish to withdraw. She had lovers; here a doctor, there an officer of the Imperial Guard; and there was always a flattering number of candidates for the honour of escorting her to the theatre or restaurant. She was convinced that respectability was synonymous with dullness, and, accordingly, when the count expressed his penitence and desired a reconciliation he was too late. Marie had no room for him now in her overcrowded heart.

They lived together, of course, and entertained on the lavish scale which brought so many Russian families to poverty in the pre-revolution period. Marie was the most popular of hostesses, for she possessed that happy faculty of making each of her guests feel that the entertainment was got up solely in his or her honour.

Months of riotous pleasure passed. Vassili Tarnowska's jealousy became a mania. He suspected every man he saw in his home, and his wife's flippant and contemptuous answers to his questions exasperated him. The beauty found it impossible to forgive or forget the fact that the husband she had once considered the most chivalrous man in all the world had been the only male to neglect her for other women.

They were at breakfast one morning when Tarnowska was handed a telegram. Suddenly he leaned across the table and screamed a question to her.

"What have you been doing to my brother Peter?" he cried.

Marie could not speak.

"Read that," said the count, as he thrust the telegram into her shaking hand.

"Peter hanged himself last night." She read the message aloud in a voice that grated on him. "He was a foolish boy," she remarked indifferently. "I had forgotten his existence."

He penned a couple of letters to Marie, which won her for him, body and soul. She ran the most terrible risks on his behalf once she was in love with him, and the woman who was a queen amongst men now gladly became the slave of this handsome officer of the Imperial Guard.

The story of their love is brief and tragic and very melodramatic. It is difficult to believe that it all happened so recently as 1907. The jealous husband, the handsome lover, the cigarette-smoking Russian countess with the beautiful face and dark eyes--all belong to the stage; yet the Tarnowskas and Alexis Bozevsky were real personages, and two of them are living to-day.

For some time Marie's latest conquest was unnoticed by her husband, who hoped that his brother's suicide would reform her. When he stumbled upon the truth he simultaneously resolved to kill Bozevsky in a duel. The first encounter between the jealous husband and the handsome lover took place in the house of the former. Tarnowska was armed, but he would not shoot a defenceless foe, and he flung on the table a revolver for his enemy.

"We will settle it here," he said, with the laugh of a madman.

Bozevsky was terrified by that laugh, and fled from the apartment to tell Marie what had happened. They agreed on a course of action, knowing that there was no room in the world for both the count and the officer, and they felt that they were helpless to avert the approaching tragedy.

A few days later Count Tarnowska, very pale and very self-possessed, entered the police station at Kieff.

"I have shot Alexis Bozevsky," he said calmly. "I found him dining with my wife at the Grand Hotel. I am your prisoner."

The astounded and agitated inspector did not detain him. Tarnowska was of too high a rank, and, besides, he suspected that the count was not quite right in his head. But Tarnowska had spoken the truth. Bozevsky was not dead, but he was dying, and Marie had left her home and had deserted her children in order to nurse him.

Bozevsky lingered for a few days, and Marie scarcely ever left his side. She knew that never again would she go back to her husband. The attack on Bozevsky outside the Grand Hotel precluded that. She spent hours praying for the recovery of the young officer whom she passionately loved, and often he would lie with a wan smile on his strained face whilst she pictured their happy future together. At these interviews Dr. Stahl, who was attending the wounded man, was always present. He was pale and weak-looking, obviously the victim of drugs, and Marie ignored him because she knew that he was in love with her too!

For Stahl had introduced Marie to the mysteries of drug-taking, to which she was now addicted. This accounts for a lot. At her trial she was described as a "human vampire," yet at times she had been the most devoted of mothers and the most generous of friends. But she lacked a brake to steady her when she began to descend, and she went from one wickedness to another until the final catastrophe.

When the young officer died Marie Tarnowska's heart died too. She could never love again, and she never did, but she could pretend to. In her desolation she rushed off into the country; she travelled and tried to forget. Her husband and her children were lost to her; she had been told that she would never be allowed to see them again. The sentence hardly affected her, for she could not think of anything or anybody now that the world was very lonely and her life empty.

Hitherto Marie Tarnowska had never known what it was to lack money. She had spent freely without any thought of the morrow. She had no idea of the value of money. In the past it had always been there for her to take. But now that her husband no longer acknowledged her existence her sources of supply were cut off, and it was the soulless proprietor of a second-rate hotel who drew her attention to the fact that even beautiful countesses must pay their way or suffer the humiliations attendant on poverty.

It was a bitter awakening. Marie Tarnowska became terrified. She could not earn her living; she must beg or borrow, or kill herself; and she had no desire to die.

She was walking to a telegraph office to send a message to her father explaining her position and imploring him to respond, when she heard her name pronounced by some one behind her. Turning, she recognized Donat Prilukoff, one of the wealthiest lawyers in Moscow. He had been a visitor at her house in the days of her glory, and Marie had been aware that he was in love with her.

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