Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (11 page)

P
rue and Hansel circled around and picked up the bottles. Both were empty. Prue gave one a sniff. “Brandy.” She wrinkled her nose and tossed the bottle back into the dirt. It landed with a clunk.

Hansel held the other bottle up. “It is still wet inside. This was left here quite recently.”

“A couple weeks?”

“Perhaps even in the last few days.”

They stared at each other through the gloom.

“Someone came up here to get fuddled up,” Prue said.

“And to dig up the grave. Which they must have intended to do in advance, because they would have needed a shovel.”

“Then, for some reason, they went to all the trouble of hauling the skeleton to the cottage and leaving it there.”

Hansel held up the lantern and bent over the dirt pile. “There are footprints.”

Prue hitched up her hem and crouched next to him. “That’s a man’s boot print,” she said. “And so is that one—that one’s a different size.”

“There were at least two men, then.”

“Should hope so, considering they polished off two bottles of popskull. Wait.” Prue squinted, then poked at the dirt. “Now this is not a feller’s print at all. It’s a lady’s.” She swiveled to face Hansel. “What in tarnation were these folks doing, drinking out here and digging up skeletons? It’s downright ghoulish.”

“I agree.” Hansel helped Prue to her feet. “Are you frightened? You are shaking.”

“No, I ain’t,” she fibbed.

“We should go back.” He still had her hands. “We have learned what we needed to know. However, I should like to have a look about before we go. Do you wish to sit here on this rock for a moment? Here.” He shrugged his jacket from his shoulders and folded it around her.

Prue quirked her lips. Him being so nice made her want to cry for some reason. “All right.” She sure as Sheboygan didn’t want him to see her boohooing. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

He went off with the lantern, bending to see the ground.

Prue didn’t sit, but she hugged the jacket close. It was homespun wool and scratchy. It smelled like Hansel, sort of fresh and leafy.

She’d have to tell Ophelia about this, after all. Sigh. Because this jaunt had turned into something serious, something to do, just maybe, with Mr. Coop’s murder. Prue mentally crossed her fingers that Ophelia wouldn’t be too sore.

She glanced into the black pit of the grave. Instinctively, she edged away, backwards into the dirt pile.

Something crunched under her boot heel.

She gulped away the nasty notion that she’d just crushed some half-pint skull, and lifted her foot.

Something glittery was down there. She scooped it up, scraped away the earth clumped over it.

A little comb. It was heavy for its size, and there were designs along its spine and some kind of dirt-crusted stones inlaid. Her heel had bent some of the teeth, but it was still intact. It could still be useful for fixing her hair in the tower, once she cleaned it up. Then she wouldn’t have to be such a Medusa in front of Hansel. She flicked away a few more particles of dirt, and slid the comb inside her bodice.

A few moments later, Hansel returned to her side. “I did not see anything else,” he said. “Did you?”

“Nope.”

“Are you ready?”

Prue nodded.

*   *   *

Ophelia and the
professor had been waiting for what felt like an hour. The moon arced across the sky. Ophelia rested her elbows on her knees and propped her chin in her hand. She watched the horses’ restless treading, the breeze-blown treetops. She peered through the undergrowth, up and down the track—

“I see someone,” she whispered.

It wasn’t Herz. It was a slighter person, flitting through the tall flowers and grasses of the track towards the coach. There was something familiar about the person’s uncertain step. “Miss Amaryllis!”

“So it is,” Penrose whispered.

Amaryllis wore a billowing cloak and a bonnet. She minced her way, now and then pausing to chipmunk-glance around, before proceeding forward again.

The coachman lifted his head.

Amaryllis reached the coach. A door swung open. An arm—a fellow’s arm, in a dark coat—extended to help her inside.

The door slammed shut, and the coachman cracked his whip. The coach rumbled away towards Schilltag and was enfolded into the night.

“Miss Amaryllis, abroad in the wee hours?” Penrose got up from the log and helped Ophelia to her feet.

“I can’t think who she’d be meeting at this hour, or, for that matter, at all. But I’m fair certain she killed Mr. Coop, and now it looks as though she might’ve had help.”

They stepped onto the track and started in the direction of the village. They spoke in undertones and searched the edges of the trees for signs of Herz.

“Miss Amaryllis a murderess?” Penrose said.

“For revenge, see. You saw how Mr. Coop belittled her.”

“I did.”

“And did you notice the way she regarded Mr. Hunt?”

“I do recall some languishing stares, yes.”

“Well, she could have killed Mr. Coop and fixed things up for Prue to take the blame.”

“Have you any proof?”

“Well, that’s what I was looking for.” Ophelia told him all about the soiled slipper. “She’d only go out in good slippers like those if she was up to something.”

Penrose was silent, but Ophelia could almost hear him thinking, like gears and cogs whirring along.

“Perhaps,” he said, “her slippers bear marks of having been in the out of doors because she wore them on past occasions for a rendezvous, like the one we just witnessed. When did you discover the slipper?”

“This morning.”

“Then they could have been soiled on the afternoon of the murder or yesterday evening.”

Why did he have to be so dratted
logical
?

“The dilemma,” he said, “is that nearly everyone in the castle had the opportunity to plant a poisoned apple in the urn before tea.”

“Everyone? Even you?”

“During the hour in question, between the conclusion of Winkler’s tests and tea, I returned to the cottage for another look round. Hunt and the ladies went off somewhere—I know not where—Winkler remained in the library to record the results of his tests, and Coop’s secretary, Smith, was holed up with him in the study, working. However, I have no firsthand knowledge of any of this. And then, of course, there are all the servants to be accounted for.” He cast her a glance.

“You don’t suppose I—”

“No.” He paused. “Where is the slipper now?”

“Dropped it in my tussle with Herz.”

Penrose stopped walking. “We ought to fetch it. No sense in leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak.” He turned on the track. “We’ll return to the castle by way of the orchard—it is at the rear, is it not?”

“Yes.” Ophelia dreaded revisiting the scene of her recent kidnapping, but the professor had a point. She caught up to him. “Maybe that was Mr. Hunt in the coach.”

“Hunt? I never noticed him so much as glance in Miss Amaryllis’s direction. Could it not have been one—or both—of the mysterious gentlemen you saw in the courtyard? If Miss Amaryllis is meeting with the same gentlemen who stole the relics from the cottage, and she is indeed the murderess, it resolves the rather untenable theory that the thefts and Mr. Coop’s death are not related.”

“But what would Miss Amaryllis want with a parcel of bones and a dirty old beam?” They walked in silence for a few moments. “If,” Ophelia said, “Miss Amaryllis has her heart set on Mr. Hunt, maybe she had the relics stolen for
him
.”

“Forgive me, but is it not a bit far-fetched to assume that Hunt returns Miss Amaryllis’s regard?”

“You can’t conceive of a plain girl being loved by someone as handsome as Mr. Hunt? Plain girls have the same sort of hearts as pretty girls. Maybe even more tender.”

“I would not venture to challenge that point, having neither the inclination nor the knowledge, except to say that Miss Amaryllis, if she indeed harbors a tender heart, keeps it remarkably well hidden.”

“Well, who else could it have been? Don’t forget we arrived in Germany only a fortnight ago. Miss Amaryllis has very few acquaintances here.”

“We must learn more of Mr. Hunt. That much is clear.”

Because of the castle hulking above them, they easily found the bottom of the orchard. Ophelia led the way to the spot where Herz had captured her.

The slipper was nowhere to be found.

“Are you certain,” Penrose said, “this is the place?”

“I’m not liable to forget the greatest fright of my life. Someone’s taken the slipper.” Ophelia stared down the slope into the pointed black wall of trees. Herz could be there, at the edge of the wood, watching them right now. She shivered.

Penrose took her elbow and steered her farther up the slope to the gate in the wall.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “I shall go to Baden-Baden and attempt to learn more of Hunt. It is, at least, a place to begin. You, in the meantime, must exercise the utmost caution. Stay inside the castle, and if you see Herz, stay well clear. We don’t know who he’s working for or what he might do next. As for Hunt—do you know how Mrs. Coop made his acquaintance?”

“I don’t.” Ophelia tugged her elbow free of Penrose’s hand. “I’ll go with you to town.”

“Nonsense.”

“You said we’d work together.”

“I said nothing of the sort. Are all American maids so high-handed?”

“A bargain’s a bargain.”

“You seem to have acquired your lady’s maid training aboard one of those famed gambling boats on the Mississippi River.”

“Americans aren’t the only ones who don’t like being double-crossed. And are you suggesting I’m not a proper lady’s maid?”

“Now that you mention it—”

She shot him a dark look. “I
am
going with you. Where are you staying?”

“At Gasthaus Schatz. In the village. But you really mustn’t—”

“
Mustn’t
isn’t a word I fancy.”

“That doesn’t come as an immense surprise.”

“I’ll meet you at your inn at ten o’clock in the morning. If I can’t get away, I’ll send word. But I mean to be there.” Ophelia pushed the gate open.

“I don’t doubt it for an instant,” Penrose said.

She slipped through the gate.

*   *   *

Ophelia closed the
gate behind her and set forth across the kitchen gardens.

Hmph. That Professor Penrose was as bossy as a—

Her eyes lifted to Prue’s tower window.

Uh-oh.

Ophelia could just discern the silhouette of a jug, sitting on the windowsill. The signal!

She hitched her skirts and broke into a jog. She thrust through the barred door at the bottom of the battlement, flew up the dank stairs, and thudded her fist on the tower door. “Prue! Prue, are you all right?”

“Keep your bonnet on!” came the muted reply. “I’m just dandy.”

“What was—the jug—did you—”

“Ophelia.” Prue’s voice was closer now. “I’ve got a sort of, um, confession to make.”

Ophelia frowned at the door. “Oh?”

Ophelia listened in silence as Prue described her outing with Hansel. A cliff in the forest. A tale about a dwarf’s bone. A dug-up grave on a cliff. Empty brandy bottles and footprints—multiple men’s and at least one lady’s.

“Ophelia?” Prue said, when she’d finished. “Are you awful steamed?”

“Steamed doesn’t even—Prue! You’re placing yourself in unnecessary danger, and all for—for what?”

“Them things on the cliff could have something to do with Mr. Coop’s murder!”

“Perhaps. But if Inspector Schubert—”

“Aw, to Timbuktu with Inspector Schubert!”

Well, Ophelia couldn’t argue with
that
sentiment.

“Hansel thinks,” Prue said, “that the dwarf bones that were in the cottage came from that grave on the cliff. So that means—well, I’m not so sure.”

Ophelia turned it over in her mind. “It means,” she finally said, “that since the skeleton was stolen from the castle, along with the other relics—did you hear about that?”

“Hansel told me.”

“All right—so it means that the folks who stole the skeleton and the relics might be the same folks who dug them up in the first place.”

“Makes sense.”

“But there is nothing to suggest that the skeleton and the relics had anything to do with Mr. Coop’s murder. It’s only a case of two different—and I’ll admit, peculiar—events happening around the same time.”

“A mighty big coincidence.”

“True. But stranger things have happened. Now listen here, Prue. Don’t leave the tower again, because I—”

“No.”

Ophelia rolled her eyes at the keyhole.

“It’s
my
freedom we’re talking on,” Prue said. “Not yours. I have a right to take a fair crack at helping myself—why, you’d say the same thing yourself, Ophelia Flax.”

Once again, Ophelia couldn’t rightly argue. “Fine,” she said. “But we’ve got to work together on this, understand? No more sneaking behind my back. If I’ve got one leg and you’ve got the other, we need to share what we learn so we can put the thing together again. Promise?”

“Pinky swear.”

*   *   *

When Gabriel entered
his chamber at the inn that night, the air pulsated with a sense of intrusion.