Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (6 page)

Ophelia turned to see Schubert in the doorway. Prue was just behind him.

Ophelia’s belly twisted; Prue’s wrists were tied together with rope.

“I have assembled you all here,” Schubert said, “to announce that I have found our murderess.”

There was a collective gasp. Prue cowered like a fawn.

“You’re off your nut!” Ophelia tried to shout. It came out as a croak.

Mrs. Coop lunged at Prue, fingers outstretched like claws. “You little trollop! Murderess!”

Mr. Hunt and Karl rushed forward to restrain her.

“Silence.” Schubert turned to his assistant. “Benjamin, the evidence.”

Benjamin went to a sideboard, bringing forth a tray with a few objects on it. He placed it on the table in the center of the library, next to Professor Winkler’s gold-testing paraphernalia, the dirty piece of wood, and the covered skeleton.

Schubert circled to stand beside the tray. “This evening, Benjamin and I inspected the bedchamber Miss Bright—or so we shall call her for the moment—shares with the lady’s maid. Imagine our surprise when we discovered three curious objects upon the chest of drawers in that chamber.”

Ophelia could scarcely breathe.

“First,” Schubert said, holding up a small leather book, “a volume of the English translation of
Kinder- und Hausmärchen
—
Children’s and Household Tales
—by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.”

“That’s not hers,” Ophelia said.

“Miss Flax, you shall refrain from speaking.”

Ophelia pressed her lips together.

“Second”—Schubert held up a small bottle of clear, glittering liquid—“potassium cyanide. The poison that killed Herr Coop, the same bottle used by Professor Winkler in his tests this afternoon. I am told the good professor informed Miss Bright of its lethal dangers.”

Winkler nodded.

Everyone was watching!
Ophelia wanted to scream.
Everyone heard it was poisonous!

“Third,” Schubert said, “a knife.” He held up a small paring knife with a green wooden handle, which Ophelia recognized as belonging to the castle kitchens. “The blade of this knife is sticky with what appears and smells to be apple juice, and a sliver of apple seed was found affixed to it as well.”

“What are you suggesting?” Professor Penrose said.

“Simply, that Miss Bright, in a duplicitous guise, located the father who had cast her off—”

“Her
father
?” Mrs. Coop screeched. She lunged again in Prue’s direction. Mr. Hunt and Karl held her fast.

“—cunningly insinuated herself in his household, and murdered him.”

M
urmurs welled up. Inspector Schubert shushed them.

Ophelia’s tongue went sawdust dry.

“I am saying,” Schubert said, “that Miss Prudence Bright, her head turned by the romance of a foreign castle, coupled with an unwholesome fascination with the
kinder
stories of the Grimms, murdered her father, Homer T. Coop, by lacing an apple with potassium cyanide.”

“That’s the silliest yarn I ever heard,” Ophelia said.

“Is it?” Schubert’s tone was supercilious. “For the sake of thoroughness, allow me to hypothesize that Miss Bright did not, at first, intend to kill her father. However, when the opportunity presented itself—the lethal poison at her fingertips, the knowledge that only her father ate the orchard apples—she ceased to think clearly.”

“Arrest her!” Mrs. Coop shrieked.

“Hold on a tick,” Professor Penrose said. “You can’t arrest the girl, you know.”

“Although she is,” Schubert said, “presumably a citizen of the United States of America—she failed to produce identity papers—it is still well within my jurisdiction to arrest her.”

“There is no requirement for identity papers when traveling across European borders,” Penrose said, “especially for ladies. You know that. The fact is, you haven’t enough evidence. Besides which, I assume the Baden-Baden jail is stuffed to the gills with thieving gamblers and members of the demimonde. Your alleged murderess, despite what you believe, is but a girl.”

“She shall attempt to flee,” Schubert said.

“In a foreign country? Where she does not speak the language?”

“She is clearly desperate and deranged. She must be locked up.”

“The tower,” Mrs. Coop howled. “Lock her in the tower! Oh, I cannot bear the sight of her!”

“Tower?” Schubert said.

“I believe, sir,” the footman Karl said, “Madam is referring to the battlement tower on the far side of the castle courtyard. It has traditionally been used as a fortification in . . . on these sorts of occasions.”

How often did people get locked up in this horrible castle, anyway?

“Very well,” Schubert said. “The tower must serve for now. Pray show the way.” He clutched Prue’s arm and pivoted her around.

“Ophelia!” Prue cried over her shoulder.

“This is madness!” Ophelia rushed forward, but Benjamin stepped in her path. She stood in the doorway and, panting, watched them lead Prue away.

*   *   *

“You don’t hold
it against me,” Mrs. Coop said, “do you?” Her words were slow and thick.

Ophelia ran a tortoiseshell hairbrush through Mrs. Coop’s frizzled yellow locks, preparing her for bed. Outside the boudoir windows, dawn was beginning to blush. “No, ma’am,” she forced herself to say. “If Prue is dangerous, she must be locked away.”

She longed to hurl the hairbrush at Mrs. Coop’s reflection in the dressing table mirror, to blubber and howl, to rush to Prue’s side. But for one thing, Ophelia was a Yankee, and Yankees don’t blubber and howl. And for another thing, she was an actress. Right now, everything depended on her acting.

“You’re a sensible girl.” Mrs. Coop could barely keep her head up. “How did you fall in with a little criminal like that?” The village doctor had come earlier in the evening, and he’d evidently dispensed something for her hysterical grief. Her eyes were as glassy as a stuffed toy’s, her pupils mere pinpricks.

Laudanum.

“You never can tell about people,” Ophelia said, tying a ribbon in Mrs. Coop’s hair. “I knew Miss Bright only a few weeks before we met you on the steamship.”

A thumping lie. But Ophelia’s gut told her to distance herself from Prue; she needed to stay in Mrs. Coop’s good graces in order to get Prue out of this scrape. It was lucky Mrs. Coop hadn’t turned on Ophelia yet—but peculiar, too. Was it the laudanum? Or was she pleased that Mr. Coop was dead?

“Now,” Ophelia said, “the doctor ordered that you try to rest. You’ve had a terrible shock.” She helped Mrs. Coop to her feet and guided her to bed. “Everything will get put in apple-pie order.” She tucked Mrs. Coop’s silken quilt around her.

Mrs. Coop’s eyelids drooped shut. She began to snore.

*   *   *

Ophelia knocked on
Amaryllis’s bedchamber door.

“Go away!”
came the muffled reply.

Ophelia sorely wished she could. Instead, she said, “Allow me to ready you for bed, miss. You’ve had a trying day.”

It
would
be prodigiously trying to murder your brother-in-law and frame the scullery maid all in one crack. And that’s exactly what Ophelia figured had happened: Amaryllis, humiliated by Mr. Coop’s nasty scolding in the presence of her beloved Mr. Royall Hunt, had taken her vengeance with that bottle of poison.

The door opened. “Go away, Flax.”

Ophelia faked a Selfless Servant simper. She’d done it hundreds of times onstage. Never had it felt so difficult. “Allow me to help you.”

Amaryllis’s lusterless eyes fastened on Ophelia. She said nothing, but Ophelia couldn’t look away, even as her heart began to thud. The gaze lasted a smidgen too long.

Uh-oh. She knew what Ophelia suspected.

“I no longer require your assistance,” Amaryllis said. She slammed the door.

*   *   *

Finally, Ophelia returned
to the bedchamber she’d shared with Prue. It was high up under the eaves, so close to the roof you could hear the clatter of sparrows on the tiles. One tiny, mullioned window admitted pinkish dawn light.

The two narrow iron bedsteads were as neat as she’d left them. The chest of drawers where the police claimed to have found the fairy tale book, poison, and paring knife were empty.

Ophelia’s eyes flew to the top of the wardrobe. Yes. It was still there, hidden behind the washing pitcher and Prue’s bonnet. The police had missed it.

She stood on tiptoe and brought down a battered leather case. She set it on the floor and knelt beside it.

The brass lock had not been touched.

Phew. Ophelia’s shoulders sagged.

She retrieved a key, which she’d wedged between two floorboards under her bed, and opened the case. Inside were tiny glass jars and broken, paper-covered sticks of theatrical greasepaint, pots of glue, false beauty spots and moustaches, powder sifters, paintbrushes, a set of false teeth, soft wax for modeling noses and the like, and a couple of wigs. She’d brought the kit along for sentimental reasons, she supposed; she’d cobbled it together over eight hard years of circus and theater work.

Two envelopes hid at the very bottom of the case.

What if Inspector Schubert were to discover her greasepaint or these forged letters of reference? She ought to hide the case and destroy the letters.

Later. She’d have to do it later.

Ophelia locked the case, stowed the key back between the floorboards, and replaced the case on top of the wardrobe. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and hurried out of the bedchamber, down the coiling, bone-cold stairs, and out into the castle courtyard.

Across the courtyard was a tall tower with a lone window at the top. Against the dawn-streaked sky, the tower was a black, menacing silhouette.

How was Prue faring in there? Was she cold? Hungry? Certainly, she’d be scared.

Ophelia had been in the courtyard several times, playing lady-in-waiting to Mrs. Coop. The courtyard was divided from the kitchen gardens by a tall stone wall with a wooden gate. This gate usually stood open. Ophelia had glimpsed, through the gate and across the kitchen gardens, a mysterious barred door. The door was set in the bottom of the long, stone battlement that formed the fourth wall for the gardens, and that connected the tower with the rest of the castle.

Now, common sense hinted that the door might take a person up to the tower. And when common sense hinted, well, wise ladies lent an ear.

Folks figured actresses were flibbertigibbets who did nothing but practice melodramatic faces in the looking glass when they weren’t lolling on divans and mowing through boxes of chocolate creams. But the truth was, actresses were some of the hardest-working ladies you could find. Theatrical life had made Ophelia as practical as an iron nail and, some claimed, just as hardheaded.

And she wouldn’t stand for this. No, she would
not
. The gumption, the absolute
brass
of that Schubert fellow, tossing Prue in the tower like yesterday’s dirty socks!

Ophelia swiped a strand of windblown hair from her eyes and marched along a gravel path towards the kitchen garden gate.

All of a sudden, a movement caught her eye on the far side of the courtyard, along the base of the western castle wing.

Yes.
There
.

Oh, golly.

A person was passing through the courtyard’s geometric shrubberies and walks. No,
two
people.

Ophelia dove, palms first, behind a row of big potted shrubs. She crouched, held her breath, and had a look-see through the branches.

Two gentlemen in black clothes and black top hats crept along through the shadows. They carried something long and large, wrapped up in cloth.

A corpse
.

No—wait. The wrapped thing was too narrow for that and a little too long.

They vanished through the gate in the castle wall that led out to the kitchen gardens.

What in Godfrey’s green earth was going
on
around here?

After a minute, to make sure those creepy fellows weren’t coming back for a curtain call, Ophelia popped out from behind the shrubs and made a mad dash.

She stopped at the gate and squinted through into the kitchen gardens. The coast was clear—the creepy fellows had vanished.

Ophelia flew between dark rows of vegetables to the mysterious barred door. And—oh, joy—the door opened easily. At the top of a dank flight of steps, she found herself out on top of the windswept battlement and just outside the tower door.

“Prue?” Ophelia made a one-knuckle rap on the door. “Prue, it’s me. Ophelia.” She joggled the door handle, just in case. Locked tight.

From inside came shuffling sounds, then Prue’s stuffy-nosed voice. “Ophelia! Get me the tunkett out of here before I—”

“Prue, try to stay calm. That is the most important thing.”

“But it’s
freezing
in here, and I—”

“They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Now, listen. I’ll see to it that you have everything you need—food, water. Have you any blankets?”

“Sure. If you call them scratchy burlap things blankets.”

“I’ll come and check on you as often as I can get away—but I mustn’t rouse suspicions. Is there anything in there, something small, that you might place on the windowsill, to work as a signal that you need me to come?”

“Hey! That’s what the prisoner did in that play we put on about the—”

“Never mind that. Is there anything you might use?”

“Um . . . there’s an earthen water jug.”

“That’ll do. Now, I’m going to get to the bottom of all this, Prue, and as quickly as I am able.”

“How will you do that? It’s the
police
we’re talking on, Ophelia.”

Ophelia jutted her chin. “I’ll allow that Inspector Schubert may have a police badge or whatever it is they’ve got in Germany. But it’s pretty obvious he’s as blind as a bat. It was Miss Amaryllis who killed Mr. Coop.”

“Amaryllis!”

Ophelia glanced over her shoulder. She crouched close to the keyhole and lowered her voice. “I saw Miss Amaryllis making sheep’s eyes at Mr. Hunt, the handsome visitor. Then Mr. Coop right humiliated Miss Amaryllis in front of Hunt—in front of
everyone
.”

“You reckon Miss Amaryllis croaked him for that?”

“Yes. And I mean to prove it. You can count on me, Prue, but please stay put. As long as you keep in the tower, out of the way and where you’re supposed to be, at least I’ll know you’re safe.”

“Don’t know about
that
—I wouldn’t be staggered if a dragon or a whole mess of ghosts showed up to the party in here.”

“
Please
, Prue.”

“Oh, all right.”

Ophelia returned to her bedchamber. She lay down, fully clothed, on her bed. She hadn’t cried in more years than she could count; tears were, she’d learned, nothing but a waste of tuck. But as she stared at Prue’s empty pillow and waited for the day, she
did
cogitate a bit on what a relief it might’ve been to shed a tear or two.

*   *   *

“I admit,” Professor
Winkler said to Gabriel, “it is a great relief that Mrs. Coop requested we carry on with our study of the house in the wood. I worried her husband’s death might dampen her fervor.” He took a large bite of hot buttered roll.

Gabriel, across the breakfast table, sipped his coffee. “It is a relief, isn’t it?”

As long as the victuals kept coming, Winkler didn’t seem to be put off by anything. But tell him the breakfast ham had run out, and well, all operations could screech to a standstill.

Fortunately, Gasthaus Schatz, the Schilltag inn they’d gone to after the police had released them early that morning, served a delicious breakfast in its rustic, pin-neat dining room.