True Crime Story Review: "Bela Kiss" by William LeQueux

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The story depicted here was, much to my surprise, a true crime tale and not fiction. It begins in the spring of 1912 by describing a couple, Bela Kiss and his wife, who have moved from Budapest to a summer resort town named Czinkota which has since become a neighborhood of that city. Both husband and wife appeared to be given to the mystic—crystal gazing, astrology, that sort of thing. The husband had been a tinsmith but, at about forty years of age, retired. Hungarian tinsmiths apparently made a good living back in the day. The wife was some fifteen years younger than her husband. They didn’t mix much with the neighbors. When her husband was away in town, the wife kept company with a young man, an artist named Paul Bihari. One day, as the husband later told the story, he came home to find the house locked. After waiting a while, he broke in and discovered a note from his wife saying she’d deserted him for her lover, Bihari, and asked him to forgive her. He was so distraught, he burned the note. Well, that’s not suspicious at all. Nor should the large metal drums he forbade the housekeeper to go near raise eyebrows. The neighborhood gossips thought maybe he was up to some illegal homebrew. No, no, not at all. This was where he stored his “petrol.” Perfectly reasonable. He motored into Budapest a couple of days a week, after all. The story is told in a matter of fact manner, even as horror upon horror unfolds. The author blames police. Kiss becomes friends with a policeman during his stay at Czinkota, which, of course, removed him from all question of wrongdoing. Women who filed complaints in Budapest were ignored until the daughter of important official was assaulted. Though author William LeQueux doesn’t bring it up, Wikipedia mentions that some of bodies of Kiss’s victims had puncture wounds on them, leading to talk of vampirism. Personally, I don’t find these types of accounts entertaining. They may be instructive, but they are sad. Yes, all the people involved are long gone and their troubles are over with, but at the same time, reading them for pleasure is (IMHO) akin to enjoying other people’s suffering. Fantasy and fiction are a different ball of wax. _____ Title: “Bela Kiss” Author: William LeQueux (1864-1927) First published: So, I’ve been unable to determine that