Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (14 page)

“It’s funny, see,” Prue went on, “because they’re the same apples that done in Mr. Coop up at the castle. With a little poison mixed in, course.”

Gertie stopped in her tracks and tore her arm from Prue’s shoulder. “What precisely are you insinuating, you ill-spoken little muttonhead? That I had something to do with that appalling crime? Why, I’ve only been in Schilltag for three days. I have every right to be here and not to be accused of—of murder!” She stuck her schnozzle in the air. “I’m on a little holiday from the
Hermannschen Heilanstalt für Lungenkranke
in Baden-Baden, if you insist on prying.”

Prue didn’t have an inkling what that gibberish meant. But it sure had startled Hansel; his eyebrows had shot up. She’d have to ask him about it later.

“I,” Gertie said, waggling a kid-gloved finger an inch from Prue’s nose, “have never even laid eyes on Homer T. Coop.” She didn’t meet Prue’s eye.

She was blowing smoke.

“Then what’re you up to,” Prue said, “tracking his secretary, Mr. Smith, like he’s a rhinoceros on the plains of Australia?”

“Australia?” Gertie spluttered. “The rhinoceros, of the family
Rhinocerotidae
, is not found in—hold on a tick. Did you say
secretary
?” She tipped her head back, opened her mouth to reveal teeth as big and square as dice, and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Prue said.

Hansel, who was still supporting Gertie’s entire weight on his shoulder, looked like he was about to crumple to the ground with fatigue.

“Oh, ho!” Gertie wiped a tear of glee from her lashless eye. “Secretary!”

“Shall we continue on?” Hansel suggested in a wheezing voice.

O
phelia and Penrose had been waiting forty minutes over untouched coffees and unread newspapers, when they saw Madam Pink descend the hotel steps. She was alone, and she sailed away down the sidewalk. Hunt emerged a few minutes later in a fresh suit of flannels and set off in the opposite direction.

Penrose placed a few coins on the table. “Shall we?”

It wasn’t until they reached the door of room number seven that Ophelia realized they hadn’t had a confab about getting inside. But before she could pipe up, Penrose had wiggled his penknife—the same one he’d used to cut the ropes in the hunting lodge the night before—into the lock.

“You seem,” she whispered, “to have criminal tendencies.”

“Not tendencies.” There was a small click as the lock gave way. Penrose pushed the door inward. “Merely abilities.”

Ophelia followed him into the chamber. “Do professors usually have need for picking locks, then?” They were in a sitting room with flocked green wallpaper, high ceilings surmounted by rich moldings, and plenty of gilt clocks, marble busts, and beveled mirrors. Double doors opened onto a bedchamber. “I thought your sort read books all day.”

Penrose was picking things up, pulling open drawers, looking under sofa cushions. “What a stodgy lot you must think us.”

“I’m not the only one.” She watched him search. He was efficient and unruffled.

Almost, truth be told, as though he’d done this sort of thing before.

Suspicion washed darkly over Ophelia. How did she know if he was really a professor at—what had Mrs. Coop said?—Oxford University? Or that he was a professor at
all
?

He glanced over his shoulder as he pushed open the doors to the bedchamber. “We must be quick about it.”

“Right. Sorry.”

The bedchamber drapes were drawn, but a slice of sunlight illuminated the rumpled bedclothes.

Madam Pink had been tickled all right.

Ophelia moved to the chest of drawers, which was scattered with silver brushes and combs, colorful silk neckties, bottles of scented Macassar hair oil, and cologne water. There was also a handsome mahogany dressing box. She pried it open. Inside was a jumble of handkerchiefs, cuff links, a fingernail buffer, several loose cigarettes, and a gold matchbox inscribed—she held it up in the shaft of light—
For my divine Eros—L. B
.

“Know of anyone with the initials L. B.?” she called to the professor, who was pawing through the wardrobe.

“L. B.? No.” He glanced over. “He’s got mounds of trinkets from ladies—gold toothpicks, diamond tie pins, and the like—in a box here. It’s part of his profession, but I must hand it to him, he’s careful to keep them out of sight.”

“I wonder how he makes ends meet? He can’t live on pawned cigarette cases.”

“Not by the looks of his clothing. He’s got a Bond Street tailor.”

“Well, I reckon he must look the part,” Ophelia said. “He is, in a way, an actor. All those rich ladies wouldn’t traipse around with a gentleman in a second-rate getup, now would they?”

“An actor,” Penrose said. “That’s remarkably astute, Miss Flax.”

He shot her a look that was, itself, just a smidge too astute.

Ophelia gulped.

She nestled the matchbox where she’d found it in the dressing case.

She was about to close the lid when something caught her eye. “Professor . . . I think I’ve found something.” She pulled a folded hankie from the bottom of the box. “This belongs to Miss Amaryllis.”

Penrose was beside her. “Are you certain?”

“See the lilacs embroidered on the corner? She’s got a whole set of these. Lilacs are her favorite.” She sniffed it. “It smells like lilac eau de toilette, too—this handkerchief has been scented.”

“Miss Amaryllis wears lilac toilette water?”

“Nothing else.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

“Oh, you know what I mean—I told you so.”

“I thought that went without saying. Now, if Mr. Hunt kept her hankie—”

“It would appear that he prized the token.”

“Which means that maybe that
was
him last night, waiting in the coach.”

“It would seem so. The troubling thing is, if Hunt is indeed a fortune hunter—and it appears that he is—it is highly unlikely that he would be inclined to return Miss Amaryllis’s regard. She is penniless, is she not?”

“The very definition of a poor relation. Mr. Coop never let her forget it, either.”

“So, then. The dove-like hearts of plain girls aside, I would propose that perhaps Hunt could be using Miss Amaryllis as part of a larger plan.”

“You think Mr. Hunt is the murderer?” Ophelia chewed her lip. All signs seemed, to her, to point straight at Amaryllis. Not Hunt.

“Who better to suspect, than a fortune hunter in close proximity to a colossal fortune?”

“But if Mr. Hunt wished to claim Mr. Coop’s fortune as his prize by marrying Amaryllis, Mrs. Coop would need to . . . die.”

Oh, lorks—that bottle of laudanum drops!

“Yes—if it is indeed the case that Miss Amaryllis would inherit her elder sister’s fortune, in the event of her demise.”

“Then Mrs. Coop could be in danger! And to think that I encouraged her to invite Mr. Hunt to the funeral tomorrow.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The next step is to observe Hunt and Miss Amaryllis together, and attempt to discern the true nature of their acquaintance.”

At that moment, there was the
click-clack-click
of a key in a lock.

They dove under the bed.

*   *   *

Ophelia’s left knee
throbbed where it had hit the floorboards. She was crushed like a kipper against the professor, and her bowler hat was smashed down on her forehead.

They listened to the sound of footsteps in the outer sitting room.

Penrose lifted the bed skirt a few inches.

A woman’s black, buckled shoes moved to and fro, below a swinging black hem and the edge of an apron. A maid.

Penrose corkscrewed his neck.

There wasn’t much light beneath the bed, but she could’ve sworn he had a, well, a
peculiar
look in his eye.

The top of her bowler was stuck tight against the bed slats. She couldn’t turn away.

Ophelia’s palms sweated. She’d never been so close to a gentleman. Last night, when they’d been tied to the chairs and when they’d hidden in the ferns, they hadn’t been nose to nose. Even when she’d performed romantic scenes on the stage, the actors hadn’t had their thighs and shoulders shoehorned against hers. And those actors had reeked of greasepaint, overripe costumes, and stale cigars. The professor smelled like soap and pine needles.

And that look in his eye. It was at once gentle and a bit . . . surprised.

Well, of
course
he was surprised. She was wearing false spectacles, muttonchops, a wig, and she’d made her skin look like parchment. Professor Penrose was squashed under the bed with a scrivener out of a Charles Dickens novel.

Ophelia’s ears blazed. With effort, she turned her head away.

“She’s going to clean the washroom,” he whispered.

They watched as the maid plunked a bucket, mop, and a basket of rags on the floor. Then she took up the mop, stepped inside the washroom, and shut the door, all the while humming to herself.

“Come on,” Penrose said softly.

They edged out from under the bed and stole away.

*   *   *

Ophelia and Penrose
didn’t speak as they left the hotel.

They managed to find, after poking through three jewelers’ shops, a floral brooch of jet beads for Mrs. Coop. Then they left the photograph of Homer—scowling and tuft-headed—that Mrs. Coop had given Ophelia for the jeweler to copy into a mourning locket.

All the while, Ophelia felt jumpy, and she hankered to get away from the professor.

He
seemed distracted and aloof.

They found the hired carriage waiting in the
Küferstrasse
where they’d left it hours earlier, and Ophelia clambered inside.

Penrose didn’t join her. “I shall return to Schilltag later,” he said. “I’ll instruct the coachman to deposit you back at Gasthaus Schatz, since I presume you would not wish to be seen at the castle in disguise.” His eyes gave nothing away.

Something had changed when they’d been underneath the bed. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, exactly.

“I didn’t ask you,” he said. “Did anyone in the castle give any indication that they knew about what happened last night? With the woodsman, I mean.”

She shook her head.

“And no one said they’d discovered that slipper in the orchard?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps it’s safe—would you ask for me, of the old woman Matilda who works in the castle kitchens, if she knows of a tapestry with a design of seven miners?”

Dried fruit Matilda and her resentful stares. Ugh. “Snow White’s little men?”

He nodded. “I was told that the design on this tapestry is the same as that on the stolen ceiling beam. I am hoping that by studying it—if it indeed exists—I might unearth a clue as to why the beam was stolen. If Matilda does know of the tapestry, find out where it’s kept.”

“All right,” Ophelia said. “I’ll ask her. Fair’s fair.”

“What does that mean?” Penrose straightened his spectacles.

“It’s my turn to uphold the terms of our bargain. You’ve helped me out all day, after all. I’ll bet you have more important things to do.”

Now what had made her say
that
?

Penrose simply bowed his head as he shut the door.

Ophelia didn’t look out the window as the carriage pulled away from the curb.

*   *   *

In Schilltag, the
hired carriage left Ophelia at the inn.

That morning she’d discovered an overgrown stone staircase zigzagging down the castle bluff, into the village. She’d spied it from a window—it started on the far end of a terraced side lawn—and had decided it’d be a better way to sneak than going through the orchard.

She walked up the lane from the inn and found the bottom of the stair behind a scraggly patch of bushes. She started up the steps.

There were probably hundreds of steps. The castle was almost overhead as she trudged upwards and the afternoon sun beat down. It was rough going, because of all the loose stones and crumbling bits of mortar, and she began to sweat beneath her woolen suit. She paused at one of the hairpin turns, in the shade of an overhanging juniper bush, to catch her breath.

From down below came the sound of steady footfalls and scattering pebbles.

If someone got a gander of her in this disguise—

She scampered into the bushes off to one side. She wasn’t completely covered there, but it was shady.

She tried to hold her breath.

The footfalls grew louder and louder.

And then there was little Mr. Smith, the secretary, hiking up the steps in a hunting jacket, tall boots, and a deerstalker hat. There was a knapsack on his back, a rifle strapped to his shoulder, and he was whistling “The Arkansas Traveler.”

He passed without seeing her and disappeared up the steps.

She allowed herself to breathe.

Only Mr. Smith. Returning from bird hunting by the looks of it. Well, the poor fellow deserved a holiday after the way he’d slaved away for Mr. Coop.

Ophelia waited five minutes, and then hastened up the steps, too.

*   *   *

“Miss Flax. I
wonder if I might have a word?” Inspector Schubert crawled out of the shadows of the corridor.

Ophelia nearly screamed. “You’ll make a person fair turn up their toes in fright, sneaking like that!”

She’d made it up to her chamber unseen—as far as she knew—cleaned off her greasepaint, and dressed in her lady’s maid gown. But Inspector Schubert had been lying in wait for her just outside Mrs. Coop’s bedchamber door.

“I did not intend to frighten you.” Schubert massaged his fingertips together. “I was merely waiting, these many,
many
minutes past, to speak with you.”

“Yes. Well. Madam keeps me busy.”

“So I see.” Schubert paused.

Had she scrubbed off all the greasepaint by her ears? Sometimes she missed that spot.

“Mrs. Coop,” Schubert said, “informed me that you only recently made the acquaintance of Miss Bright.”

“That’s right.” Ophelia tried to remember exactly what she’d told Mrs. Coop. “We met in New York, only a few days before we sailed for Europe. At an agency. A domestic service agency.”

“Ah. And you were traveling to England to work in a grand household, I understand?”

“Lady Cheshingham’s.”

“Cheshingham,” Schubert murmured, as though committing the name to memory.

This called for a change of subject. A quick one.

“I wished,” Ophelia said, “to ask
you
a question, Inspector Schubert.”

He flared his nostrils. “
Did
you?”

“Has the American consulate been told about all this?”

“The consul shall be abroad for another week.” Schubert drew his thin lips back.

She’d have to ignore his anger. She might not get another chance to speak with him. “Who was it that overheard Prue conversing with Mr. Coop?”