Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (8 page)

“I cannot put it more simply,” Winkler said, blotting his forehead with a handkerchief. It was almost midday, and the sun was growing hot, even in the forest glade. “When I went to the castle library to view the skeleton, just after we had breakfasted together—with the view of drawing and measuring it, you see—it was no longer there.”

“Did you ask the servants—”

“Of course. No one claimed to know anything.”

“What about the ceiling beam?”

“Gone as well.”

“But that,” Gabriel said, “could’ve been the key to verifying the significance of the cottage.” It was a struggle to sound disinterested. “What about the furnishings from inside the house—the beds and dishes and such that we placed in the library alcove?”

“Alas, also gone.”

“What a terrible loss to science.”

“Science? My dear Penrose, this cottage shall prove to be a hoax, mark my words. I fancy whichever peasant dug up a child’s grave to obtain that skeleton began to grow anxious about vengeful spirits or the like, and decided to rebury it.”

Gabriel set his jaw. Thank God he’d found that cuckoo clock with the same design as the ceiling beam. Not all was lost.

“P
erhaps,” Winkler called to the woodsman, Herz, “you ought to find some village men to assist you. At this rate, the thicket will have grown back by the time you are finished.”

Herz paused, panting, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The look he gave Winkler could’ve withered grapes on the vine.

“I wished to ask you,” Gabriel said to Herz, “when you first began to clear the brambles from about the cottage, were there any signs of recent entry?”

Herz glared out at him from the shade of his brow. Then he licked his lips. “No.”

Winkler swiveled his chins to regard Gabriel quizzically. “Recent entry?”

“The skeleton had been positioned there more recently than the rest of the contents of the cottage. It hadn’t the same coating of dirt.”

Winkler treated Gabriel’s shoulder to a hearty slap. “You have come round then—you agree that it is a hoax. I must say, I am relieved.”

Herz was still staring at them with the sort of expression a cook might’ve worn while observing a plump goose’s neck. Unnerving, considering the chap was brandishing an axe.

“Well then,” Winkler said to him. “What are you waiting for? Go away and fetch some men to assist you.”

“I,” Herz said, swinging the axe over his brawny shoulder, “go to village now.” He slouched away.

“Well then,” Winkler said to Gabriel, “surely, despite the unfortunate death yesterday, they shall put something out for luncheon in the castle. Perhaps some of that delicious liver. Shall we go eat?”

*   *   *

Herz the woodsman,
Gabriel learned from the castle’s first footman after luncheon, lived with his wife and an indeterminate number of offspring in the castle’s rear gatehouse.

“Not,” Karl said, “the main gatehouse above the road from the village, mind. There’s another, at the back, below the castle orchard. This gatehouse is built over a road that leads far, far back into the forest.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, slipping a coin into Karl’s hand.

The coin disappeared beneath Karl’s wine-stained cuff.

*   *   *

Mrs. Coop dozed
and thrashed against her pillows all day. Her glazed eyes and half-conscious yelps reminded Ophelia of Dolly, the trained seal in P. Q. Putnam’s Traveling Circus.

It was not until late afternoon that Ophelia, as she was tidying up the water glasses, crumpled handkerchiefs, and smelling salts on the table beside Mrs. Coop’s bed, noticed the brown glass bottle.

She picked it up, keeping one eye on Mrs. Coop. Mrs. Coop’s eyes were shut and her mouth was open, but like Dolly, she was proving herself disposed to sudden fits of snarling.

The label was not, as Ophelia had expected, in handwritten apothecary’s script. Nor was it in German. The label displayed an etching of a girl’s plump-cheeked face surrounded by rose blossoms, and it read:

Dr. Alcott’s Celebrated Hysteria Drops

For the cure of hysteria and all manner of feminine complaints

Dose: A teaspoon full in a little water, to be taken every three to four hours

Theodosius Alcott, Pharmacist
Rochester, NY

Rochester, New York? These drops hadn’t been dispensed by the village doctor, after all. Mrs. Coop must’ve brought them from America. The only thing was, Ophelia had never noticed Mrs. Coop under the influence of strong medicine before that morning.

Peculiar.

Ophelia replaced the bottle on the table, put the empty water glasses on a tray, and left for the kitchen.

The kitchen was silent.

Freda the housemaid sat alone. The flowered cotton sleeves of her housemaid’s dress were rolled up, and it appeared she had been tasked with shelling a pile of peas. But the peas and a bowl lay forgotten on the table. She was munching some kind of chocolate biscuit, and her eyes were riveted on the pages of a book.

“Freda?” Ophelia said.

“Miss Flax! You made me jump near out of my skin!” Freda pressed a palm against her cheek. “You should not go sneaking up on a body when there has been a murder in the house. And with me reading Mr. Poe, too.”

“I beg your pardon. I thought you’d heard me come in.” Ophelia took Mrs. Coop’s dirty water glasses to the sink. “Has Prue been brought everything she needs, Freda? Food? Water?”

Freda’s expression closed. She’d remembered who she was talking to.

“Why are you asking me about Prue?” Freda said. “With her locked up in the tower, I have to do all her work
and
mine.”

“Might I help you? With those peas, perhaps?”

Freda scowled, slapped her open book facedown on the tabletop, and started shelling peas.

“The police were here again today,” Ophelia said, “weren’t they?”

“Seems you already know the answer.”

“They spoke to Prue?”

“To Prue and to a few others as well. Trying to build up a case against her, I suppose. They did not get far, by the sound of it. Prue did not say a word.”

That
was a relief.

Suddenly, Cook swung into the kitchen with clattering boot heels and puffing breath. “You two! Gossiping like queen bees when we have enough work for a staff of thirty.”

“No one but that fat professor is eating what we cook,” Freda said. Peas plinked into her bowl.

“Why are you bothering Freda, Miss Flax?”

“She has been asking,” Freda said, with a devious glance at Ophelia, “where the orchard is. The
apple
orchard.”

The little liar! But . . . perhaps an opportunity had been plumped in Ophelia’s lap.

“The orchard?” Cook placed her hands on her hips. “Now why would you want to go there? That place has caused more than enough mischief.”

“It’s only,” Ophelia said, “Inspector Schubert asked me where it was, and I couldn’t say.”

“You are not poking about on Prue’s behalf, are you?” Cook’s voice was softer.

“Not—”

“Orchard’s on the slope behind the castle. Past the courtyard, through the kitchen gardens. Behind a green wooden door in the wall.”

“Thank you. I—”

“I do not wish to hear a thing about it.”

*   *   *

The sun was
sinking by the time Gabriel rapped on the knotty door of the rear gatehouse. From inside came the playful screams of children, the yaps of a dog, crashing crockery.

The gatehouse hadn’t been easy to find. He’d followed a road that began at an old mill on the edge of Schilltag, led around the base of the castle bluff, and meandered through a somber stretch of forest before he’d found the overgrown cart track leading to the gatehouse. The gatehouse had a moldering, forgotten air. Clearly, it hadn’t been remodeled at any point in the last three centuries.

Gabriel rapped again.

The door swung open. A plump woman, perhaps thirty years old, with a rosy baby on her hip, appeared.

“Ja?”
She sounded impatient and looked suspicious.

“Good evening,” Gabriel said in German with a slight bow. He introduced himself as a professor who was visiting the castle.

Frau Herz’s eyes narrowed. “There was a murder up there. What do you mean, coming unannounced to a private home like this, when there has been a murder! Why,
you
could be the murderer.”

“I beg your pardon, madam—”

“Mina!” Frau Herz yelled over her shoulder. “Put the kitten down this instant!”

There was a feline yowl, more crashing, then a chorus of giggles. Gabriel allowed his eyes to drift past Frau Herz into the gatehouse interior. It was shabby and smelled of fried onions.

“Get a good look?”

“I came here,” Gabriel said, “only to make the briefest of inquiries, after which I shall beat a hasty departure and leave you and your cherubs in peace.”

“What is it?” Frau Herz wiped snot from the baby’s nose with the corner of her apron.

“It is a matter of a clock—a cuckoo clock, which I purchased from Herr Horkheimer’s shop this morning. He informed me that you made it. A beautiful thing it is, too.”

“Well”—Frau Herz was joggling the baby on her hip, but her countenance had relaxed somewhat—“it may be difficult to believe, but when these brats are not driving me mad, I do make carved pieces, mainly for Horkheimer’s shop.”

“Is it not, traditionally, a man’s trade?”

“It was my father’s trade, and my grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s before that. Papa trained my brother, but Joachim was never very strong, and he died young. I had always been watching and learning, too, ever since I was a wee one. With his only son dead, Papa agreed to let me train, too.”

“I’ve come to ask—the design of the clock, along the roofline, has a rather fascinating design. Seven little men, with shovels and pickaxes over their shoulders, marching in a line.”

“Never heard of Snow White, then? A fancy scholar-man like you?”

“No, no—I identified the figures as Snow White’s seven dwarves. But the exact design—is it your own?”

Something drifted across Frau Herz’s eyes.

The baby whimpered. Inside the gatehouse, a child yelled, “Mama! Mama! Peter hit me!”

Frau Herz sighed. “I must go.”

“Is it your own design?”

She paused, then looked him straight in the eye. “I will tell you if you go away.”

“All right.”

“It is not my own design. I copied it, years ago, from a tapestry in the castle. A tapestry that belongs to the old deaf woman who . . . who works in the kitchens.”

“A servant owns a tapestry?” Gabriel frowned. Tapestries, at least real ones, not the machine-made copies that were beginning to be produced, were immensely valuable.

“You said you’d go away.” Frau Herz slammed the door shut.

*   *   *

Prue’s tower had
two windows. One overlooked the kitchen gardens, and the other faced west. The westward one had iron bars, and it was a good thing, too, because the sheer drop outside was enough to make you lose your vittles.

Around sunset, light in every shade of fruit punch came pouring through that iron-barred window.

Prue dragged the three-legged stool over. Maybe a little perusing of the scenery would take her thoughts from her face-off with Inspector Schubert that afternoon. He and his faucet-nosed assistant had come to the tower and tried to make her confess to killing Mr. Coop. Seeing as blabbing had never gotten her anything but in the suds, she had decided not to make a peep. Schubert had been hopping mad by the time he left.

Nothing but hills and pointy treetops outside the tower, and sparrows flitting around in the lit-up air. Far down below was a sort of rockslide at the base of the castle wall.

Prue blinked. There was a person down there, too, hustling along. Prue made out the dun-colored blur of a lady’s walking skirt, a flash of a yellow hat. Straw. A satchel, swinging on a strap.

The figure disappeared under the trees.

Prue chewed her lip. She was new to these parts, true. But that was castle property down there. And that lady, well, Prue had never laid eyes on her before. Not once.

*   *   *

Gabriel hiked along
the dark, wooded track towards Schilltag, thinking.

Perhaps the tapestry had been a gift from the old servant woman’s employer. He had learned yesterday that some of the castle servants had stayed on after Count Grunewald had left.

Or perhaps the old woman had stolen the tapestry. That would account for Frau Herz’s reticence. But there he was, thinking like one of those awful nobs who suspected the servants were forever after the silver teaspoons—

There was a snap of twigs.

Fancy running into a bear when he hadn’t got his gun.

He caught a movement in the trees, a metallic glimmer. Silently, he stepped behind a tree trunk.

It wasn’t a bear. It was the woodsman, Herz, prowling through the undergrowth.

Odd. He hadn’t a torch to light his way, and he wasn’t on the track.

And—Gabriel observed him a few seconds more—he wasn’t heading home, towards the rear gatehouse. No, he was traipsing deeper into the wood, and he had a rifle on his shoulder.

Gabriel decided to follow him. Perhaps Herz would lead him to the secret that the Schilltag folk were so eager to keep hidden.

*   *   *

Gabriel had been
a lieutenant in the cavalry during the Crimean War. He’d led scouting missions many times. So creeping through an ink-shadowed forest in pursuit of an armed and disgruntled man did not faze him quite as much as it ought to have.

He didn’t dwell upon that, however, as he was led deeper and deeper into the trees. He was too intent on keeping sight of Herz, and on keeping his own footfalls silent.

Herz was nothing more than a black shape up ahead, blending in and out of still blacker shadows. Now and then, the steel barrel of his rifle flashed.

After about twenty minutes, Gabriel stepped on a rotten log. It collapsed under his weight. The undergrowth crackled.

Up ahead, Herz froze.

Gabriel held his breath, watching as Herz turned his head from side to side, listening.

Presently, Herz set forth again.

After a few heartbeats, Gabriel followed.

They were passing a stream that gurgled alongside a vertical, fern-covered bluff. By Gabriel’s calculations, they were heading to the northwest, away from the castle and Schilltag. The cottage was directly west of the castle, and Gabriel estimated that they had passed it already. Where was Herz going, then?