Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (23 page)

“Funny you say that, because I didn’t reckon he was really, truly soaked that night. He was only playacting.”

Hansel met her eyes. “For what purpose?”

“Don’t know. To cover something up, I’d wager.” Prue crunched down on another walnut.

*   *   *

“I found the
tapestry,” Ophelia told Professor Penrose, just as soon as she’d hopped into the hired carriage in front of the inn.

“You found it! Where?”

“In a sort of attic lumber room, all rolled up. You didn’t tell me what a whopper it’d be.”

“And you saw the design? Of the seven dwarves marching with their shovels and pickaxes?”

“That’s just the border—the same group of seven dwarves goes around and around the edge—at least, where it isn’t so faded you can’t tell what’s there.”

“And the middle?”

“It’s a beauty, and colorful.” The tapestry had reminded Ophelia of the fanciful theatrical set of Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties’
A Damsel in Distress
. But she couldn’t tell Penrose that. He had already thrown her too many suspicious, penetrating glances. “Green-wooded mountains, a river, a castle, men on horseback, and hunting dogs. Deer and bears.”

“Typical medieval motifs.” Penrose slouched back against the carriage seat.

“Don’t look so disappointed. There was storybook gimcrackery, too.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“You’re hiding your excitement,” she said, “about as well as a little boy on Christmas morning.”

“Tell me.”

“Fairies,” she said. “A dragon.” She paused for dramatic effect.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Very much.” She smiled. “Snow White’s cottage in the trees. Snow White herself.”

“On the tapestry?”

“Yes.”

“I must examine it,” Penrose said, almost to himself.

“There was also something much more peculiar. In the background, behind the castle, the cottage, and the trees was something, well, I couldn’t make out if it was a mountain or a sort of man’s face. Near the top, to the left of the castle. It looked more like a face the more I backed away, but seeing as it was spread out on the floor, and all wrinkled, I couldn’t be exactly sure.”

“A face or a mountain?”

“That’s the thing. I couldn’t say.”

They rolled along for a few minutes. Ophelia had been chewing over whether or not to tell Professor Penrose about Prue and Hansel going off searching for Snow White’s tomb. She knew the professor would be intrigued. That was the problem—he’d be
too
intrigued. And she also dreaded anyone telling her
I told you so
. Still, he was helping her out. She ought to come clean.

“Professor,” she said. “There’s something else. Something about a tomb.” She told him all she knew.

“Of course,” Penrose said, when she’d finished. His eyes glowed in that special way. “The Church of the Holy Spirit. It is a wonder I did not think of it before. She must have married one of the electors of the Rhine Palatinate.”

How did he
know
these things? It was too annoying by half. “Don’t tell me you’re itching to traipse off to Heidelberg now,” Ophelia said.

Penrose quirked a corner of his lips. “I’d be lying if I said no. But we’ve somewhat more pressing business to attend to today.”

*   *   *

“I meant to
tell you,” Gabriel said to Miss Flax, once they were seated in the tearoom at the
Conversationshaus
, “your British gentleman’s disguise is, if possible, still more convincing than the last time. Your side-whiskers seem . . . fuller. Grayer.”

She laughed. “I’m most obliged.”

Jesting helped to take Gabriel’s mind off all that Miss Flax had told him in the carriage. The tapestry, found. Snow White’s burial place, perhaps identified. He burned to simply
go
. To see for himself, to touch. But discerning whether or not the gaming establishment was tied to the murders was, at this point, essential to proving Miss Flax’s and Miss Bright’s innocence.

The tearoom was filled with swaying palms, tall hat plumes, and tinkling china. After they ordered coffee, they asked their waiter where they might find the owner of the gaming establishment.

The waiter’s eyes bulged. “The owner? Herr Ghent?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “You are surprised.”

The waiter’s gaze shifted. “I have never met him. He does not—we do not speak to him directly. I am not certain that even the manager has made his acquaintance.”

“And where is the manager?”

The waiter cringed, as though Gabriel were waving dentist’s pliers before his nose.

Gabriel slipped a coin onto his tray. “For your trouble.”

The waiter jerked his head towards the corner of the tearoom, where a man in a waistcoat and glossy moustache hovered over a table of ladies. “There.” He rushed away.

When the manager drew near, Gabriel signaled to him.

“Is everything to your satisfaction, sir?” the manager said. He wrung his gloved hands.

“Everything except, well, a rather delicate matter has emerged, which involves the gaming rooms.”

The manager’s face froze in a humorless grin. “Yes?”

“And I wished to speak with Herr Ghent of the matter.”

“Herr Ghent does not speak to public persons regarding”—he cleared his throat—“
accounts
.”

“It is not a matter of debt.”

“One of Herr Ghent’s famous wagers, then?”

Intriguing. He’d have to bluff his way through this.

Gabriel scratched his temple. “I wasn’t aware that Herr Ghent’s wagers were famous. I was under the impression that only I knew of them.”

“Only you? No, no, no. Last week, sir, he forgave a Florentine viscount an immense debt on a single round of roulette. The gentleman stood to lose his ancestral villa.”

“Indeed.”

“Herr Ghent enjoys the excitement, you see, and he can afford to lose. I suspect”—the manager lowered his voice, leaned forward—“it might afford him pleasure at times, too.”

“Pleasure?”

The manager’s eyes were steely, now. “To see desperate people lose everything.”

“Ah.” This explained, perhaps, how Count Grunewald had become so mired in debt to the gaming establishment. “Well, at any rate, I must speak with him.”

The manager straightened, all business again. “I simply cannot—”

“Perhaps this”—Gabriel extracted a small card from a case in his breast pocket—“will vouch for my sincerity.”

The manager took the card between his thumb and forefinger, as though it were soiled. But as he read the card, his face wreathed into smiles. “I apologize, sir. I was not aware. Please forgive me.”

“Herr Ghent’s office is on the premises?”

“Indeed, indeed. On the third floor—there is a long corridor at the top of the stair. At the end, go left, and follow that corridor to the end, where there is a set of doors. That is where you should knock.” He reverently placed the card back in Gabriel’s hand.

“A
llow me to take a gander at your magical card,” Ophelia said.

“I’m afraid not.” Gabriel withdrew the card case from his jacket.

Before he could put the card away, Ophelia leaned across the tea table and plucked it from his fingers.

“Not very gentleman-like of you,” he said.

“It’s awful easy to slip out of character.”

The card’s elegant script read,
Gabriel Augustus Penrose, Fifth Earl of Harrington
.

“Well, aren’t you grand,” Ophelia said. “Is this a forgery?”

Penrose sipped his tea.

“It’s not?” Ophelia stared down at the card and then back at Gabriel. “Earl of Harrington? You’ve been lying about being a professor? I knew you were a sham! As soon as—”

“I am a professor. And an earl. I prefer the former occupation immensely, however, and I’m more than a little embarrassed to have wheeled out my title. But we must see Ghent, and a title does come in handy in a pinch.”

Ophelia was deflating like a squashed sofa cushion. It had been one thing to go gadding around with a professor of crinkumcrankumology. But it was quite another to gad around with an earl.

Poppycock, Ophelia Flax. When did a Yankee ever quiver before an English blue blood? He was still just a man. She’d seen his bare feet, too.

“We’ve not a moment to lose,” Penrose said. He paid for their tea.

They made their way out to the foyer and up a grand staircase.

*   *   *

The third floor’s
wide, carpeted corridor was hushed. No one was about. They found the set of doors the manager had mentioned, and Gabriel rapped twice.

There was a long silence. Then, a rustling. At last, a man opened the doors just a crack. He was small and papery-looking, and the eye he put up to the crack was blue and watery, with a purplish pouch beneath.

“What is it?” he said in German. His voice was creaky.

“Good afternoon,” Gabriel said. “I am Lord Harrington, and this is my assistant, Mr. Beals. I wonder if I might have a brief word with Herr Ghent?”

The eye bulged. “Who sent you here?” He now spoke English.

“I come of my own accord.”

“But who told you where to find this door?”

The manager in the tearoom would be out on his ear if he were betrayed. “I deduced it.”

“Deduced?” The eye bulged still more. “Herr Ghent does not accept visitors.”

“You are his—secretary?”

“Correct. But he does not accept visitors.”

Gabriel tried to peer over the secretary’s head, through the crack. “He’s here, then?”

“No. No, he is not here. He is afflicted with rheumatism. He visits the thermal baths every afternoon for his cure.”

There were footsteps behind them. Ophelia glanced over her shoulder; Gabriel heard her gasp. He turned.

The two guards. They drew closer. He saw the one’s heavy cleft chin, the other’s black slash of eyebrow.

His belly clenched for battle.

But the guards’ faces remained impassive as they arrived at the door.

They didn’t recognize them from two evenings ago, then.

The papery little secretary opened the door to admit the guards. “Go away,” he said to Gabriel and Ophelia. “Do not come back.”

*   *   *

“If Herr Ghent
is at the thermal baths,” Ophelia said, once they were outside on the steps of the
Conversationshaus
, “you might go there and speak to him directly.”

“That’d be more efficient, I agree, than attempting to circumvent those guards.”

They crossed the white gravel drive, towards the promenade. The colorful gowns and parasols of the strolling ladies stood out like airy confections against a rich green backdrop of shade.

“I believe,” Penrose said, “if we follow the promenade to the end, and then climb one of those cobbled streets that go up the hillside, we’ll find the baths.”

*   *   *

The newly constructed
Friederichsbad was a stately stone building halfway up the hill, with large, arching windows and Romanesque caryatids. Miss Flax stayed behind on a bench on the expanse of lawn in front of the baths, and Gabriel went inside.

In the lofty foyer, a porter greeted him with a bow. He was ushered to a table at which sat a fat lady whom Gabriel paid for a ticket. He was led by a serving man down a long marble corridor to a private chamber. There was a red sofa, a washstand, a gilt mirror, and a velvet curtain.

“Bath’s behind the curtain,” the serving man said. He turned to leave.

“I beg your pardon—”

The man turned back. “Yes?”

“Have you any idea if Herr Ghent is here at the baths?”

Something unreadable flickered across the man’s eyes.

Good lord. Was every last soul in Baden-Baden tasked with protecting Ghent’s privacy? Perhaps that wasn’t surprising. Ghent was surely one of the most powerful men in a town clogged with the titled, the influential, and the wealthy.

“I know,” Gabriel said, “that Herr Ghent suffers from rheumatism, and I am a sufferer myself.”

“Not a very bad case,” the man said. His eyes traveled with unmasked suspicion up and down Gabriel’s frame.

“It’s worse than it looks. I am particularly pained in my knees. My doctor, who once treated Herr Ghent in London, suggested I speak to him in person about the efficacy of the waters here.”

“Everyone here has rheumatism. That is why they come.”

“My doctor said Herr Ghent was the man to speak to.”

“Very well.” The serving man’s face was unreadable. “I shall make inquiries and return presently.”

Gabriel investigated behind the velvet curtains while he waited. There was a large white bathtub sunk into the marble floor, filled with steaming water. Snowy towels were stacked beside it.

Several minutes later, there was a thud on the door.

Gabriel swung the door wide, expecting to see the serving man again. Instead, there stood an enormous gentleman, built rather like a prizefighter, with a neck as wide as his bald head and a water barrel of a chest. He wore a tailored black suit of capacious dimensions.

“Yes?” Gabriel ignored the menacing look in the man’s eye.

By way of answering, the man pushed into the chamber. He slammed the door behind him and thrust his face right into Gabriel’s. His breath stank of rancid meat; it was all Gabriel could do to stand his ground.

“I suspect,” Gabriel said, “you have the wrong chamber. This is—”

“You have been asking for Herr Ghent.”

“Well, yes. I desired to converse with him briefly regarding a matter of mutual interest. You aren’t Ghent, are you?”

“Do not be coy.” The man rammed his smashed nose still closer—if that was possible—to Gabriel’s. “If you ask about Herr Ghent again, or enter his gaming rooms, or even speak his name, you will regret it.”

What was so important about protecting this Ghent fellow?

“Do you understand?” the man said.

“Quite. Although one might inquire why.”

“You know why.”

“Do I?”

“Prying where you do not belong.” He grabbed Gabriel’s lapel, twisted. “Meddling in business that you do not understand.” He shoved Gabriel against the wall.

Gabriel resisted the urge to free himself. The man had an ogre’s strength, and going about with a broken arm or a black eye was not a savory prospect.

He needed to keep him talking. Perhaps bluffing would do the trick.

“I don’t understand the connection between the murders at the castle and the gaming establishment.”

“What do you know?”
the ogre roared.

Ah. So that
was
it. This was all, somehow, about the castle, rather than simply having to do with the lately departed Count Grunewald and his gambling debts.

He only needed the ogre to give him some clue.

“I confess I do not know very much,” Gabriel said, “but I shall soon enough.”

“You must not! Herr Ghent will have our heads!”

“Your heads,” Gabriel said, eyeing the ogre’s massive bald dome. “No simple task.”

The ogre’s hand fell from Gabriel’s lapel.

What sort of monster was Ghent, if the thought of his displeasure could make
this
one kowtow?

“The head.” The ogre clenched and unclenched his teeth. “Do you know where the head is?”

He’d gone off his onion. Dangerous in a gentleman of those proportions.

“I don’t,” Gabriel said, “know about any heads.”

“You do not?” The ogre appeared, for a second, as relieved as a child who’d been reassured of a biscuit. But he abruptly reassumed his menacing air. “If you search for Herr Ghent again or poke your nose in business that is not yours, I will kill you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Gabriel said, adjusting his spectacles.

The ogre crashed out of the bathing chamber.

*   *   *

“I don’t know
if Herr Ghent was really in there, steeping his rheumatism away,” Penrose said to Ophelia, as they hurried away from the Friederichsbad, “or if being sent there was a setup.”

“It had to be a setup,” Ophelia said. “The two guards at the
Conversationshaus
must’ve recognized us. Otherwise, how would that roughneck have known you were a meddler?”

“You say that as though it were a fact.”

“You
are
a meddler—and he threatened you. He threatened to kill you.”

“Whoever Ghent is, he’s got his henchmen cowed. Although I must say this particular specimen wasn’t up to scratch in the intellect department. In fact, I suspect he was a bit mad. Said something about finding heads or some such rot.”

Ophelia stopped on the steep, cobbled street in front of a florist’s shop. “What did you say?”

“You’re quite rosy under your whiskers.”

She gave him a stern look.

Penrose smiled. “He said, ‘Do you know where the head is?’ or something to that effect—after, mind you, we’d been discussing Ghent having
his
head if he—”

“But don’t you see? The head! They’re looking for the head!”

“I fail to see your point.”

“On the tapestry. Remember I told you about the peculiar thing that looked a little like a mountain but also like a man’s face?”

“Good God.” Gabriel shook his head. “That’s it. For some reason, Ghent’s guards are searching for that head.”

“You mean, they’re searching for the tapestry.”

“Perhaps.” His eyes shone. “But if the castle depicted on that tapestry were a representation of Schloss Grunewald and its surrounding environs, would it be unreasonable to surmise that there is also an actual mountain, somewhere out there in the woods, that resembles in some way a man’s face?”

“But the castle on the tapestry didn’t look like Schloss Grunewald. It looked more, well, square. Plainer.”

“The
schloss
was rebuilt about fifty years ago. That tapestry is much, much older.”

“Are you saying that the tapestry is some kind of . . . map?”

“Precisely.”

“Herz,” Ophelia said.

Penrose met her eyes. “Yes. He’s guarding that mountain.”

“Maybe he works for Herr Ghent. What do you reckon is out there?”

“That I cannot say, although my suspicion would be some sort of site or relic that solves the puzzle of the cottage and the skeleton.”

“Not,” Ophelia said, “Snow White’s favorite picnicking spot?”

He lifted a shoulder.

She pursed her lips. Was she, Ophelia Flax, practical to her marrow, really entertaining the notion that that cottage had belonged to Snow White? That the skeleton was not some hoax, but an important relic?

She pictured the
Leviathan
foaming across the Atlantic towards New York. Inspector Schubert’s slippery sneers. Prue—now ranging heaven only knew where, doing who knew what.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Let’s go find the mountain,” she said. “I saw the tapestry, and Herr Ghent’s guards haven’t, so we’ve got a head start.”

“Gone are the days when you thought relic-hunting was a waste of time, then?”

“Mrs. Coop gave me leave today. She sent me to purchase ingredients for black hair coloring at the apothecary’s shop.”

“She means to dye her hair black?”

Ophelia told him about the hysteria drops and how Mrs. Coop seemed to fancy, at least when she was under the influence of the medicine, that she was Snow White. “For once,” she said, starting off down the street, “I’m not sneaking around, and I mean to make the most of it.”

*   *   *

“I suspect,” Gabriel
said, having gained her side in a few strides, “I ought to save my breath regarding the matter of you not participating in risky excursions? We must go into the wood, you understand. I assume you haven’t forgotten Herz’s rifle? His traps?”

“Nightmares of them every night.” Miss Flax nestled her bowler down on her head.

“And we needn’t discuss the impropriety of a young, delicate lady elbowing through the brush?”

“I’m not delicate. And you may have noticed that I’ve got on a pair of sturdy tweed britches and a pair of boots that would be equal to an expedition in deepest Africa.”

“Yes. I won’t inquire where you got those.”

“Good.”

She tossed him what he would’ve sworn, under any other circumstances, was a coquettish smile.