Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (32 page)

The chamber was in shambles. Tables and chairs were on their sides, the carpet was puckered, and one of the drapes dangled from the curtain rod. The oval mirror on the armoire was shattered and smeared with what was, unmistakably, blood.

*   *   *

Prue and Hansel
sneaked into the shadowy castle gardens through the orchard door. They had ridden to Schilltag from the railway station on a hired mare and walked the rest of the way.

The castle windows were all lit up. Figures darted to and fro inside.

“Something is happening in there,” Prue said. “And”—her breath caught—“ain’t that someone standing up in that window, goggling down at us?”

Hansel squinted up at the tower. “We ought not go into the castle until after we have investigated the cliff for Snow White’s tomb. We cannot afford any delays. The police might be searching for you in there, Prue.”

Hansel dug out a lantern and shovel from the gardening shed. He grabbed Prue’s hand, and they headed out into the forest.

*   *   *

Ophelia hurried along
the battlement, towards the tower. Her hair flew behind her, and cold wind whipped and swirled down from the indigo sky. The tower loomed up. No light shone in its windows.

“Prue!” Ophelia yelled, as she neared the tower door. “Prue, wake up! It’s me, Ophelia!”

Silence.

Her hands shook as she felt for the door handle. It was hard to see in the faded light. She should’ve brought a lamp.

The door was unlocked. She pushed it inwards. The hinges moaned.

“Prue?”

As her eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness, she saw a three-legged stool, a stack of books. In one corner, the ticking mattress. In another corner, the chamber pot.

It was true. Prue was gone.

Ophelia feared her heart would burst.

She turned and retraced her steps along the battlement. This time she was running.

S
he rushed to the kitchens, unable to think of where else to go.

“Prue’s truly gone!” she cried, bursting in.

The servants were clustered around the hearth. They had been talking softly and were wide-eyed. They fell silent and stared at her.

Cook spoke first. “You look like a wild creature, Miss Flax.”

“Prue’s gone!” Ophelia repeated. “The tower is empty! Don’t you care?”

“I told you,” Cook said, “Prue has been missing since yesterday.”

Katrina and Freda nodded. Freda crunched into a raspberry pastry.

“Oh, but she has returned,” Wilhelm said.

Everyone turned to stare at him. “I saw Prue, and Hansel, too, not five minutes ago, going across the kitchen gardens hand in hand like two children.”

Of course.
Hansel
.

“Why,” Cook asked, “did you not tell us?”

Wilhelm shrugged. “I did not think it mattered anymore, since now the police are searching for Mr. Smith.”

“You saw the blood in Mr. Smith’s chamber!” Ophelia cried. “Something’s happened to him, too, and the murderer—the
true
murderer—is still at large! Where were Prue and Hansel going?”

Wilhelm sipped his tea at what seemed an excruciatingly slow pace. “I do not know.”

“Which direction were they headed?”

“Let me think.” Wilhelm gazed into his teacup. “Towards the orchard, if I recall correctly.
Ja
. Towards the gate in the wall.”

The forest. Hansel was taking her out to the
forest
.

No time for cogitating. Ophelia hotfooted across the kitchen to the door and out into the windswept, starry night.

She stumbled through the kitchen gardens and burst out into the top of the orchard.

Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps Hansel and Prue
had
only been going for a stroll and a little fresh air.

But Ophelia couldn’t forget the nasty gleam in Hansel’s eyes, the grim set of his mouth, when he’d said Homer T. Coop had deserved to die. There was no telling what he was capable of.

She squinted down into the jagged black ring of trees. There was a flickering light, not far beyond the perimeter of the orchard. Someone was down there. Moving, step by step, deeper into the forest.

She hitched up her skirts and raced down the orchard slope, towards the light.

*   *   *

In the forest,
Ophelia could no longer see the flickering light, but she rushed blindly forward. She stumbled on sharp stones, the thorny undergrowth tore at her clothes and cheeks, but she could think of nothing but Prue.

She’d let her down.

Ophelia’s lungs wheezed and her heart thundered. She stumbled and fell on a clump of ferns, and as she scrambled to her feet, she saw again, wavering in the trees ahead, the light.

“Prue!” she tried to yell. It came out as a croak. She scrabbled and clawed her way forward.

Above her in the canopy of trees, an owl hooted, and there were black, fanning wings. She recalled, dimly, the talk of bears in this wood and the furred boars with their pointed tusks. The wolves.

She didn’t care. She’d fight them off with her bare hands. She’d—

Out of nowhere, an impossibly forceful blow hit her head.

The forest was, for a brief instant, lit up in a shower of stars. Then she was falling, and everything went black.

*   *   *

Hansel led the
way up the steep path. The moon rode behind spiny, black treetops. Every last rustle and cheep in the thickets made Prue jump.

At the top, out on the cliff, cold wind whipped around in all directions. The landscape below and beyond the cliff was a vista of blurry grays. But a yellow light glowed and shuddered from behind one of the boulders on the cliff.

Prue glued herself to Hansel. “What’s that scraping sound?” she whispered. It was grating and rhythmic, and it came from the direction of the light.

Hansel shook his head.

They picked their way over the rocks, towards the light. They came up to the boulder and peeked over.

There was a fizzing lantern balanced on a stone. There was also a man on his hands and knees. His face was averted, and he was scraping at a rock with some small tool. He turned his head.

“Franz!” Prue cried. “What, for land sakes, are you doing down there?”

Franz didn’t stop scraping. “I found them,” he said. “I found them all. All seven. See?” He lurched to his feet, lifted the lantern, and stumbling over rocks, illuminated a round stone. “Come closer.” His voice was whipped away on a gust of wind.

Hansel and Prue came around the boulder.

Franz showed them seven stones carved with numerals:
I
,
II
,
III
,
IV
,
V
,
VI
,
VII
. There was the dug-up grave they’d found before, in front of the
IV
marker.

“Seven dwarves,” Prue said. “Seven graves.”

“But where in God’s name is hers?” Franz said. “It must be here somewhere. It must!” It was tough to tell whether the wobble in Franz’s voice was the start of laughter or tears. Maybe both. “I have been here, scraping, for hours. Yet look how many rocks there are still!” He swept a hand around the cliff. “It will take days. Days and days.”

Prue gasped. She’d caught a flash of Franz’s hand in the lantern light. His fingers were bloody, his nails clotted with black moss. And his eyes, beneath his wind-lashed hair, burned like those of a madman.

“Calm yourself,” Hansel said.

“Calm myself!” Franz shrieked. Then he tipped back his throat and cackled up to the moon-glow clouds. “Calm? At a time like this? When a treasure beyond price lies in the balance? Hansel, Hansel. I would have thought you, of all people, would comprehend what a great difference it makes to one’s life chances if one has treasure laid up in the bank.”

Prue felt Hansel stiffen.

“Do you not think it a bit greedy,” Franz said, “to attempt to steal this treasure out from under my nose?”

“He ain’t stealing,” Prue said. “The treasure belongs to Hansel, seeing as it’s buried with
his
ancestress.”

Franz squinched his eyes. “What did that missing manuscript page say? You saw it. You found that British bovine and saw the page.” He prowled closer.

Prue’s heart thumped.

“We are here,” Hansel said, “because we realized, like you, that the comb in Miss Bright’s possession belonged to Snow White. That it came from this cliff.”

“I do not believe you,” Franz said. “There is more.” He bent and snatched something off the ground.

A sword. Long and thin, like those the students had been dueling with in Heidelberg.

He darted around Hansel, clutched Prue’s elbow, and yanked her to his bony chest. He pressed the sword’s edge to her throat.

“You know something I do not,” Franz said. He dragged Prue, both of them staggering over rocks, to the cliff’s edge. Cold, pine-scented wind gusted up from the abyss. “Tell me what the last page said or I shall slit her throat and toss her over.”

He was trembling, and the sword’s blade bit into Prue’s skin.

Stinging pain blossomed. Blood tickled down Prue’s neck, and tears blurred her vision.

Hansel inched towards them, speaking in lulling tones. “How did you know of the existence of a burial treasure?”

“Herr Ghent told me. He told all of us. All of his workers.”

“Ghent? The owner of the gaming rooms?”

“How did you suppose I went from being a croupier to a student at university? Only gentlemen go to university. Ghent made a gentleman of me.”

“But why?”

“He knew I could be of use to him. The evil little mite only uses people. Fancies the world is his chessboard. He caught me stealing from his casino, and he took an interest in me. Recognized another cunning spirit. He had long wished to learn about the Order of Blood and Ebony, suspecting they might possess knowledge about his ancestors.”

“
His
ancestors?”

“The mining dwarves.”

Prue squeezed away her tears, because another light had appeared behind Hansel, at the back of the cliff. It was a lantern carried by a bulky form in a skirt.

Gertie.

“In exchange for infiltrating the Order,” Franz said to Hansel, “Ghent paid for my education. And my clothing, and my boardinghouse, and so on. But as the year wore on, it became apparent that the Order of Blood and Ebony was nothing but a sorry excuse for young bucks to drink themselves into stupors and pester pretty black-haired barmaids. Ghent’s patience was wearing thin when Homer T. Coop was killed.”

“Then Ghent had further use for you, after all,” Hansel said.

“Yes. He wished for me to discover more about the house in the wood and Coop’s death. And this one”—Franz brought his lips close to Prue’s cheek—“proved to be a font of knowledge.”

“That is why we encountered you in Baden-Baden two days after Coop was murdered. Ghent summoned you.”

Prue was watching Gertie’s silhouette. Gertie had been bobbing around at the back of the cliff, shoving bushes and boulders. And then suddenly, Gertie and her lantern disappeared into some kind of black hole.

“This grows wearisome,” Franz said. Keeping hold of Prue, he shoved her to the utmost edge of the cliff. One of her feet dangled in nothingness. The other was sliding on loose dirt, about to go over. She screamed. It echoed into the vast wilderness.

Hansel lunged forward. With one hand he reached out and grabbed a fistful of Prue’s ugly brown dress. With his other hand he clobbered Franz square in the nose.

Franz made a noise that sounded like “Urgh.” His fingers released Prue’s wrist. Hansel dragged Prue to the safety of his arms. And Franz sagged like a sack of potatoes and pitched over the edge of the cliff.

“Holy mackerel!” Prue squirmed out from Hansel’s arms and rushed to the cliff’s edge. Franz had landed on a rocky ledge about six feet down. His jacket was hooked in a scraggly bush. His eyes were shut.

Hansel was next to her. “He appears to be breathing.”

“Knocked out, though.”

“That bush will most likely keep him from going over the precipice.”

“He’ll keep.” Prue scrambled to her feet. “Let’s see what Gertie’s doing.”

“Gertie? What about the wound on your neck?”

“Come on!”

Turned out, there was a cave back against the cliff, behind some rubble and bracken. The entrance was as big around as a barrel, glowing with light. Gertie must have rolled away the boulder that stood just to the side of the cave’s entrance.

Inside, Prue was expecting more rubble, dirt, maybe a bear. But it was a chamber. It was paved all around—floor, walls, ceiling—in marble that might’ve been white as milk once. Now black lichen crept across everything.

A marble slab, also covered in lichen, sat in the middle of the chamber. On top of the slab was an oblong box. Gertie, disheveled and breathless, hunched over the box, holding her lantern high.

Prue and Hansel crept in. Pebbles skidded across the marble floor.

Gertie glanced up. Her eyes were round, her mouth slack. “She is here,” she murmured. All her hostility seemed to be forgotten.

Prue and Hansel stole forward. Prue figured this was how visiting a shrine would feel, even though it smelled like earthworms and dirt.

The box was all clouded up with gray and black, made of some kind of glass.

“You going to open it?” Prue whispered. Her voice rebounded against all that marble. Goosebumps sprouted on her arms.

“It hasn’t any hinges,” Gertie said. “It will take several men to move the top.” She set her lantern on the casket and started rubbing at the glass with her gloved hand.

A millipede squiggled past.

After a moment, Gertie had cleared a round patch.

“There she is.” Gertie nudged the lantern closer. “Look.”

Prue looked.

Eek
.

A skull grimaced up at her. Strings of long gray hair clung to the skull. Neck bones disappeared beneath the papery remains of a gown.

Prue edged away. “Well. No sign of treasure here. We’d best be going.”

“Wait,” Hansel said. “There is something in there. Yes, see? There is a bracelet about the bones of her wrist.”

Gertie lunged forward. “So it is! And here! Ah! A breach in the casket.”

There was a long crack along one side of the casket, and a small piece of glass had collapsed inward.

Gertie thrust her fist through and yanked the bracelet. It came out in her gloved fist, along with a couple of Snow White’s finger bones. They tinkled to the floor.

Prue stared down at the finger bones. Then she stared up at Gertie, who was polishing the bracelet. It was made of the same tarnished gold as the ruby comb, a thick cuff deeply carved and inlaid with dirty green stones.

“Emeralds,” Gertie said. “Gold.” She rubbed frantically at the rest of the casket. “There ought to be more jewelry in there. Mounds and mounds of jewelry. I cannot wheel around that old battle axe any longer. One more consumptive cough into her hankie and I’ll wring her bloody neck!” She scowled into the casket. “Where in blazing Hades is the rest of the treasure?” She raced around the perimeter of the marble room. There was nothing to be seen but twigs and leaves that critters had carted in.