On a dreary day in Budapest during the 1920s, a shattered young handmaid knocked on the door of a midwife in Buda, seeking shelter and help. With no other ideas in her exhausted mind, the distraught servant explained that she had been working in Pest, but was forced to quit when she fell pregnant. She was frightened that if her parents found out about the newcomer, they would disown her in anger, and so she could not go home. She wanted to give birth to the baby at the midwife’s house, and then go back to work after giving the baby away to an orphanage. In her deepest desperation, the young girl offered some money to the midwife, which was just enough to cover all expenses until the baby was born. Feeling a tug at her heartstrings and understanding that the girl would indeed have been chased away from her village had she dared to go back, the midwife agreed. When the handmaid’s baby boy came into the world, the midwife secured him a spot in an orphanage where he should be delivered after turning 8 days old. The 8th day came on a Friday, and the girl bid farewell to the midwife and got in a car with her bundled baby. However, at the orphanage they awaited the baby boy in vain; he never arrived...
A few days later, an upset lady rang Budapest police headquarters – then located on Zrínyi Street near St. Stephen’s Basilica – sobbing hysterically. She called to report a devastating kidnapping. “Today I took my little boy outside to get some fresh air, and walked alongside the Danube Promenade. I was on my way back home already when, while walking through Ferenciek Square, I remembered to go inside the church to confess. Stepping inside, I asked a lady in black to be so kind as to hold my baby boy while I confessed. When she accommodatingly agreed, I handed her my baby,” wept the lady, based on the recollections of Ede Gellért, the Detective Superintendent of the Hungarian Police at the time. The lady went on to explain that by the time she left the confession booth, her baby was nowhere to be found.
“I collapsed on the floor and lost consciousness. When I came to my senses with some help from kind strangers, we looked for the lady everywhere, but without any success,” she howled. She hysterically begged the officers to find her baby boy, because when her husband returned, she would have to break the awful news to him herself, which she simply couldn’t do; she would rather commit suicide. The officer immediately asked the frenzied woman to describe the mysterious female kidnapper for a police sketch, but the lady claimed that because of the dimly lit interior of the church, she did not see her face; it had not even occurred to her to take a careful look, as she would never have even imagined that a woman would be capable of such evildoing.
The detectives worked hard to find out more about thiss lady who gave her baby to a stranger. They soon found out that she married a traveling agent, József Leste, two years before, and he was away from home when the baby went missing. It was clear that as a family man, Mr. Leste was uncomfortable leaving his pregnant wife alone, and did not want to travel at all, but he had no other choice due to his work obligations. The detectives also interrogated all possible witnesses who were at the church when the baby went missing, but could not get any closer to the truth.
Word of the kidnapping soon spread among detectives citywide, and after thorough research, the officers working the case soon caught wind of the story about the midwife who had arranged for an 8-day-old baby to be brought to an orphanage, but it had never arrived. After tracking down the midwife, she explained that when the baby turned 8 days old, the mother left her house with the intention of going to the orphanage, and had no clue about where the girl might have gone, because she was all too aware that the new mom had no money left. The midwife added that she did not ask the girl for her address or any other contact information, because they did not have anything more to do with each other. However, the young mother left behind three letters in a drawer that she used during her stay at the midwife’s home. Eagerly unfolding the papers, the detective realized that two of the letters were from the girl’s sister, whose address was displayed on the envelope. She lived in Újfalu – a small village situated in Serbia today, which belonged to Hungary before World War I. According to the letter, the sister also knew about the baby, as she explained that she also would not have been brave enough to tell their parents. The detective knew he had to visit the girl’s sister, who may have had knowledge about her sibling’s whereabouts. However, he realized that the drawer’s darkness was hiding yet another letter that was unsigned, and contained only a single sentence: “Meet you at that place not on Saturday but on Friday”. Why would someone write a letter to the girl but not sign it? Was it possible that she had something to hide? Who was the young mother meeting on that mysterious Friday?
Putting together pieces of the puzzle in his mind, the detective realized that Friday was the day when the girl left the midwife’s house, and it was the same day when the baby went missing on Ferenciek Square. Was it possible that these two cases were connected? Did these two ladies involved in two different cases know each other? The detective took the letters with him and plotted a savvy scheme. At noon that day he sent a letter to Mrs. Leste, the lady still sobbing about her abducted baby, asking her to meet him. He explained that he believed a woman who lived in Mrs. Leste’s building was the kidnapper, thus they had to meet someplace else so that the suspect would not catch on to the investigation. The detective asked Mrs. Leste to send a letter back to him to suggest the most convenient place for them to meet. In reality, he only needed a sample of Mrs. Leste’s handwriting to compare it to the unsigned letter. Half an hour later, a letter arrived from Mrs. Leste, who had not the slightest idea that she was being led astray.
“Highly regarded sir, Having read your lines I inform you that I will be waiting for you in the garden of the National Museum at around 7 o’clock. Beside the back gate.
Respectfully, Mrs. Leste” The handwriting was strikingly familiar...
When the detective found Mrs. Leste at the National Museum as evening fell over the city, he almost immediately cut the meeting short, providing a made-up story about following a false lead, and apologized for keeping her out so late. In reality he was very much on the right track, but not at all to Mrs. Leste’s benefit. He spent some time comparing Mrs Leste’s letter with the one he found in the young girl’s drawer, and the handwriting seemed to match. He was wondering what on earth these two ladies from completely different social backgrounds could have to do with each other.
The detective’s next step was to visit the young girl’s sister in Újfalu. An employee of the railway company helped him find the address, and he knocked on a door – through which a baby’s cries could be heard. As the door swung open he immediately spotted a little boy with weary and watery eyes staring right at him. The baby could not have been much older than a few days... Meanwhile, a surprised young girl was repairing undergarments by the crib.
“Are you the baby’s mother?” demanded the detective, and when he received a positive answer, he got straight to the point.
“So it is you who gave birth at the midwife’s house, right?”
“Yes it is me, but why do you ask?”
The girl explained that she had every intention to give her baby to the orphanage, but from the moment their eyes met she adored him, and her heart ached with pain at the thought of giving him up. So, she mustered the courage to bring the love child back to her parents’ home, risking everything for their forgiveness. If they had not forgiven her, with no other choice she would have gone back to Pest, give the baby away, and begin working again.
When the detective asked her about the unsigned letter, the girl quickly revealed the truth. The two ladies met at the midwife’s house where the young girl had been staying, as oddly enough, Mrs. Leste used to go there for advice even though she was not carrying a baby. With a weakened voice, she confessed that one day Mrs. Leste whispered into her ear to offer 100,000 Hungarian koronas if she would lend her the baby for an hour. The girl was desperate for money to go back home, thus she reluctantly agreed. The young mother insisted that she must always be within 5-6 steps away from her child, but Mrs. Leste only wanted to have a stroll with the baby from the Danube Promenade to a church, and then give him back to his mother. To the young girl with no money, bizarre though this offer was, it seemed just fine.
Mrs. Leste held the baby while walking along the Danube Promenade all the way to Ferenciek Square, while the girl followed close behind. Once at the church, Mrs. Leste returned the baby and gave the girl the money she promised, and entered the confession booth. The girl then left with her own child, while Mrs. Leste stayed inside.
Now it was time to interrogate Mrs. Leste, to uncover the complete truth. The detective caught the first train back to Budapest, and ordered the false victim to report to police headquarters immediately. Once there, recognizing that the jig was up, Mrs. Leste revealed that she had married a jealous man who had an obsession that a marriage meant nothing without a baby.
“He wanted a baby more than anything, and had been torturing me about it for a whole year. He even said that if I would not give birth, he would divorce me. I could not do anything else but lie about being pregnant, and I dressed accordingly during the previous months. Now you know the rest.” Mrs. Leste, who met the expectant handmaid while visiting the midwife to learn how to act during the stages of her “pregnancy”, ended her confession by saying that she lied to her husband because if she ever revealed the truth, he would have divorced her straight away.
Therefore, Mrs. Leste faked a pregnancy and committed kidnapping to put her husband’s mind at ease.
Unfortunately, there is no further information about what happened to Mrs. Leste, so we will never know if her husband ever uncovered this grand conspiracy, or if Mrs. Leste was imprisoned for her deception. However, charges could quite possibly have been raised against her for misleading the authorities, in which case she might have spent as much as two years in prison, which would have made it almost impossible to keep hiding the truth from Mr. Leste; hopefully he never learned what great lengths his wife was taking to make his biggest dream come true... or at least make it appear that way.
Legyetek ott első városi piknikünkön!
Gyertek, és töltsünk el egy vidám napsütéses tavaszi napot együtt a városligeti fák lombjai között május 1-jén, ahol day-time piknik, workshopok, sok szuper food truck és dizájnvásár is vár mindenkit.
Ünnepeljük együtt a tavaszt, a találkozásokat és azt a pezsgést, amiért annyira szeretjük Budapestet!
hirdetés
