In the last days of World War I, Hungary's 1,000 year-old kingdom lay in ruins. But its greatest challenges were still to come. One of them was named Bela Kun.
Once investigators had descended on the village, many women were desperate to stop graves from being disturbed and bodies being exhumed. They surely did not want autopsies, but many also had more immediate concerns about leftover arsenic that had been buried with the victims. They knew once the coffin was popped open, there it would be.
“Dandy would trot off, tail wagging, toward the merchants who had set up at the weekly market on the square. He would dodge under the baskets and bags of shoppers, scoot past the tub makers and the children jockeying for bottles of homemade lemonade. He’d pass under the Austrian tightrope walker, who had fastened his highwire to the Hotel Hungarian King and strung it all the way across to the County Hall."
