Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (15 page)

“You are under the mistaken impression, Miss Flax, that it is your place to interrogate the police.”

“I only—”

“Impertinent, are you not? It is I who shall ask questions. Now. I wish to learn more about Miss Bright’s past, and you are the only person who knows anything about her.”

“Like I said, I haven’t known her long. I reckon you’re looking for evidence against her, but I really haven’t got anything to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Madam will be wanting me.”

Ophelia slipped through the door and shut it behind her.

At least Inspector Schubert seemed to know nothing about last night’s incident in the forest. Not yet.

M
rs. Coop was at the dressing table in her boudoir, her face buried in her arms. She was bawling.

“Ma’am?” Ophelia hurried to her side.

Had she found out that Mr. Hunt wished to kill her and marry Amaryllis?

“Are you hurt, ma’am?” Ophelia said.

“Hurt?” Mrs. Coop lifted her puffy, pink face. “Don’t be a fool! I’m heartbroken. Where have you been?”

Ophelia found her a hankie. “Your sorrow is very fresh,” she said, “but it’ll pass in time. When my mother died, I thought I’d never—”

“Not Homer!” Mrs. Coop’s tone was raspy.

“Not—?”

“This!” Mrs. Coop pointed a plump, trembling finger at her own face. “I look an absolute fright, and Mr. Hunt is coming to the funeral tomorrow. Can’t you
do
something?”

*   *   *

When Gabriel returned
by hired carriage to Schilltag, he sent a brief note up to the castle, addressed to the gardener boy, Hansel. The note requested that Hansel pay Gabriel a visit at the inn, at the boy’s leisure.

Gabriel wished to quiz the lad about how to access the gravesite on the cliff. The Grunewald woods were such a tangle of paths and undergrowth, Gabriel was not certain where to begin.

He could scarcely keep still for the crackling anticipation. Because, if that cliff and that grave were what he suspected they were, well, what a stupendous find.

But Hansel did not come, and he did not send a reply.

*   *   *

Ophelia saw Hansel
in the kitchen, when she was waiting for Cook to finish assembling Mrs. Coop’s dinner tray. Hansel was, it seemed, the only cheery person in the castle. Mrs. Coop lay like a log upstairs, her face covered in the mask of French green clay and honey that Ophelia had mixed up for her. Amaryllis was holed up in her own chamber, Mr. Smith had gone out hunting again, and all the other servants were crotchety.

Probably on account of the funeral tomorrow.

Ophelia took Hansel aside.

“Poking around with Prue, are you?” she whispered.

Hansel blushed. “I—I am sorry, I do not know what came over me. She is quite persuasive, so I—”

“No matter. Every soul is at liberty to save their own skin. Only, Hansel,
please
take care of her, and I’d also be most obliged if you kept me informed of your discoveries.”

“Oh, yes. Prue told me that you are doing a bit of sleuthing, Miss Flax.”

Ophelia lifted her chin. “Merely making judicious inquiries.”

“We did learn about the lady in the straw hat this afternoon. She is a British tourist, called Miss Gertie Darling, staying in Schilltag—”

Penrose had hit that one on the nose, then.

“—and when we followed her into the woods, we discovered her, by all appearances, spying upon Mr. Smith.”

“Mr. Smith?”

“With binoculars. And taking notes.”

Odder and odder. Ophelia shook her head. Well. It took all sorts to make a world. Bunking in a circus wagon with the Fat Lady and a girl who could sit her own feet on her shoulders while walking on her hands had cemented
that
notion. And if some tourist had set Mr. Smith in her sights, who was Ophelia to judge?

“Miss Darling lied about why she is here,” Hansel said. “She told Prue and me that she had been staying in Baden-Baden at the
Hermannschen Heilanstalt für Lungenkranke
.”

“The what?”

“It is a sanatorium—a sort of long-term hospital. For invalids. There are several in Baden-Baden, because the thermal springs there are thought to have curative powers.”

“She is an invalid?”

“That is the trouble—she appeared healthy as a horse. And her claims are particularly strange because the
Hermannschen
sanatorium is for those afflicted with diseases of the lungs.”

“Consumption?”

Hansel nodded.

“Lying,” Ophelia murmured. “Perhaps she had nothing to do with Mr. Coop’s death. All the same, she has been snooping around the castle forest.”

“And spying upon Mr. Smith.”

“Yes. And there were lady’s footprints at the cliff gravesite that may have been hers. I cannot fathom how, exactly, this Miss Gertie Darling could be involved in the murder and those missing things. Yet she appears to be suspicious.” Ophelia considered. “Only one thing to do, then.”

Hansel nodded. “I shall go to the sanatorium this evening, and discover if she is truly in residence there.” He ran a finger under his collar. “I shall ask Prue to stay behind this time.”

“Thank you, Hansel.” Ophelia turned to go. She stopped. “Oh—I near forgot. Would you do me a great favor and ask Matilda a question?”

“Certainly, Miss Flax.”

The thought of Professor Penrose made Ophelia feel unaccountably jittery and distracted all-overish. Something to do with his gleaming eyes under the bed in that hotel. . . . All the same, she’d agreed to hold up her end of the deal. She’d find out about the tapestry.

Hansel and Ophelia went to the chimney corner.

Matilda huddled on her customary stool, peeling potatoes with a green-handled paring knife.

Hansel crouched and embraced her. Matilda’s withered-apple face remained blank.

“What would you like to ask her?” Hansel said to Ophelia. He took up the slate and chalk from the flagstones, and rubbed the slate clear with his cuff.

“Ask her . . . ask her if she knows of a tapestry that has a design of seven men on it. Little mining men, like Snow White’s.”

Hansel jerked his head. His brows were furrowed. “Why do you want to know this?”

“Um.” Ophelia swallowed. “It might be the same design that was on the ceiling beam taken from the house in the forest.”

Hansel’s usually pleasant face had taken on a hardness. “The
stolen
ceiling beam.”

“Um. Yes.”

“Who told you about the tapestry?”

“So there
is
a tapestry?”

He ran a hand through his blond hair. “
Ja
, there is a tapestry. Matilda told me about it once.”

“Would you ask her where it’s kept?”

“Very well.” Hansel printed in German on the slate. The chalk clicked and screeched.

Matilda’s eyes smoldered as she read the question. She snatched the chalk and scrawled something over Hansel’s neat handwriting. Then she thrust the slate back into his hands, muttering, and resumed peeling the potato.

“What does it say?”

“She writes, T
he tapestry was lost a long time ago
. And,
Maidservants should keep to their places
.”

“Yes, well, thank you.” Ophelia fetched Mrs. Coop’s dinner tray and hastened out of the kitchen before Hansel could ask any more questions.

Ophelia was uneasy about Prue snooping with Hansel. Hansel was a good fellow—a little guarded at times, but a good fellow all the same. Still, Prue was a prisoner, if not exactly under arrest. If Inspector Schubert got wind of her doings, who knew what might come about?

And yet, the way Ophelia was thinking, this predicament was like any other sprawling, disheartening piece of work—a field to be plowed, a circus tent to be erected, a whole pantomime’s worth of costumes to be stitched. No matter the task at hand, the more people pulled together, the faster the job got done.

And, by gum, Ophelia was going to dig in and get this job done.

*   *   *

“You’re going to
town
without
me?” Prue whispered to Hansel out the tower window. The dregs of sunset lingered in the sky. “Now you’re confabulating with Ophelia and leaving me out of things? Hey! I suppose Ophelia gave you a stern lecture about how you ought to leave me behind? That it?”

“Oh. I—well. . . .”

“Come on! Throw me that key!” Prue struck her wistful Juliet pose in the tower window frame. Assuming Juliet ever had a pimple brewing on her left nostril.

Hansel scratched his head. “Oh, all right.”

*   *   *

Prue and Hansel
rumbled into Baden-Baden in a farmer’s hay cart that Hansel had borrowed. It was dragged by a mule. Between the rattletrap, the ugly brown dress, and the suspicion that her left nostril was starting to resemble a gumdrop, Prue felt like a yokel. At least her oily hair was neatly braided and covered with a kerchief.

They clip-clopped through winding streets, weaving towards what Hansel said was the town center. The buildings got fancier, and there was more hustle and bustle, more light and music spilling out of hotels and restaurants. Then they turned up a steep street. It was strung with grand stone villas that were surrounded by lush trees and spiked walls. Light beamed from their tall windows. Piano music and the scent of honeysuckle drifted on the air.

“Here it is,” Hansel said presently. “The sanatorium.”

They had turned a corner. A large ivory building, a mix of grand hotel and hospital, nestled back against the hillside. All the windows were lit up, pooling gaslight on the circular front drive. The drive was lined with crisp trimmed shrubbery. Grecian urns of roses flanked the double doors at the top of wide steps.

Hansel stopped the cart.

“Now what?” Prue said.

“I had supposed we would sneak in through the back somewhere. Attired in this fashion, no one will believe we are visitors. This is a costly sanatorium.”

“How about we take a look through the windows and size things up?”

They left the mule and cart on the shadowy side of the street. Prue hoped some prince wouldn’t look out the window of his villa and notice it. They slunk around the side of the sanatorium and burrowed through a boxwood hedge to a lit-up window. They peeked through.

A dining room. All filled with pale, trembly ladies and gents hunched over bowls of soup.

“Isn’t this a late suppertime for sickies?” Prue whispered.

“They are wealthy. Perhaps they wish to keep up their aristocratic routines.”

They did look rich, despite all the crunched-over spines and dribbling soup. Their clothes weren’t festive, but there was a lot of sheened black silk and elegant cashmere wraps. And all their consumptive hacking was directed into hankies of delicate linen and lace.

Waiters sprinted around on the Turkish carpet, refilling water glasses and picking up soup spoons dropped by quivering fingers.

“Must be horrible, having consumption,” Prue said. “I just can’t picture Miss Gertie here.”

They watched for about half an hour. Prue had been ravenous during the ride in the hay cart. But the sight of this bunch was enough to put her off her feed for a week.

“There she is.” Hansel prodded a fingertip against the windowpane.

“That’s her all right.”

Miss Gertie posed like one of those Viking ladies at the opera, all blond braids and magnificent bosom, in an arched doorway at the far end of the dining room. All that was missing was one of those helmets with horns. She gripped the handles of a wicker wheelchair, which was occupied by what appeared to be a heap of black wool with a white wig.

“That’s why Miss Gertie is staying here at the sanatorium,” Prue said. “She’s a nurse or companion to that shrively old lady.”

Gertie wheeled the old lady to a table and arranged everything just so before seating herself.

“She was not lying, then,” Hansel said. He turned and slid down from the window into a crouch, leaning against the foundation stones. “She truly is staying here.”

Prue slid down next to him. “I still think she’s mighty suspicious. So will Ophelia, I’d wager. Hey!” She elbowed Hansel. “Seeing as she’s occupied with dinner, why don’t we sneak into her room? Maybe we’ll find that notebook she was scribbling in.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

“How? Besides, if we were caught, they would summon the police. You are an escaped prisoner.”

“You’re making me sound like a criminal.”

“I do not wish for you to be taken to the jail here in town. There are rough people there.”

“All the more reason to get to the bottom of what Miss Gertie is doing with her spying.”

Hansel thought about it. “That makes sense,” he said at last.

They elbowed out of the boxwood and circled around to the back of the sanatorium. They approached what seemed like a workers’ door. As they drew closer, they saw the door led to a bustling kitchen, jam-packed with waiters and cooks.

“We’ll be about as sneaky as a brass band in a funeral parlor if we go in there,” Prue said.

Just then, the kitchen door burst open and a dough-faced man in white cook’s coat emerged. He brandished a whopping knife.

Prue and Hansel stepped backwards.

The cook yelled something to Hansel, swinging the knife in a way that Prue wouldn’t have called hospitable.

Hansel said nothing. He just grabbed Prue’s hand, and they piked off.

“What did he say?” Prue panted, once they had reached the hay cart.

“He called us beggars and said that we should go to the soup kitchens if we were hungry.” Hansel helped her up into the seat. “Or he would send for the police.”

*   *   *

Hansel did something
odd as they creaked their way back through the streets of Baden-Baden in the hay cart.

It happened when they passed by a shop. Prue couldn’t read the German sign, but it had the look of a pawnbroker’s shop. There was an accordion in the window and a pair of high-heeled shoes with jeweled buckles, a bone fan, oil paintings and enameled snuffboxes, a revolver in a pink satin-lined case, and a whole set of silver cutlery.