by Maia Chance
He was a child. Only a child. Ophelia took a deep breath. “I would be most obliged if you’d come find me when Gerard returns.”
“Gerard is a low character, Miss Stonewall, or hadn’t you noticed? He keeps a revolver tucked in his trousers. He’s dangerous as well as loathsome.”
“A revolver?”
“If he returns, you should give him a wide berth.”
“Do you suppose he won’t return?”
“He will. Abundant wine here at the château—he found the cellar, it’s unlocked, and it’s got hundreds of barrels. His notion of paradise. No, we’re all stuck here until that brute of a blacksmith mends the whippletree. I can’t think why it’s taking so long.”
Nor could Ophelia. Unless the blacksmith was deliberately dilly-dallying.
* * *
In the breakfast room, Griffe, Banks, and Larsen conversed in serious tones. They fell silent when Ophelia entered.
“Mademoiselle Stonewall, good morning,” Griffe said. “How well you look in that dress. Charmant.”
How dare he compliment her after refusing to discuss their wedding date yesterday? Did he take her for a spineless dupe? On the other hand, Ophelia wasn’t able to tell him exactly what she thought of him, on account of the missing ring, so she probably did seem like a spineless dupe. How maddening.
“What is the matter?” Ophelia asked the men. “Is someone ill?”
“No.” Griffe and Larsen exchanged a glance.
“Ladies ought not hear of such things,” Banks said.
“We are stronger than you might suppose.” Ophelia sat. “Has someone died?”
“Only a sheep, in a pasture just outside the village,” Griffe said.
“Attacked by a beast,” Larsen said, tapping his fingers on the table.
“Was it a wolf?” Ophelia asked.
Silence. Banks coughed.
“Tell me,” Ophelia said.
“It is rather gruesome, my dear, and not fit for delicate ears,” Banks said.
“I haven’t got those.”
Griffe sighed. “The sheep appeared to have been gored.”
“Gored!” This must be why the servants in the kitchen had seemed frightened. “By a wild boar?”
“It appears so.”
“I didn’t know that wild boars ate the flesh of large animals,” Ophelia said.
“They do not. At least, not ordinarily. Perhaps there is an overgrown boar gone mad. . . .”
“The peculiar thing is,” Larsen said, still drumming his fingertips, “the ewe’s throat was torn out.” His normally vague eyes gleamed.
“Surely wild boars do not do that,” Ophelia said. True, boars had tusks. But other than those, all of their teeth were the squarish, vegetable-chewing sort.
“My theory is that there were two beasts at work,” Banks said. “A wild boar—hence the goring—and a wolf.”
Larsen nodded. “The wolves are known to go mad in these parts. Have you heard, Miss Stonewall, of the Wolves of Périgord?”
“Um. No.”
“One hundred years ago, a pack of man-eating wolves roamed this region in the dead of winter. They killed nearly twenty people and maimed many more, until they were finally slain by a hunter. The hunter, I must add, was over sixty years of age, and when he killed the marauding wolves, he was rewarded by the king of France.” Larsen narrowed his eyes, as though envisioning a king placing a garland on his yellow-whiskered, balding little head.
“That explains it, then,” Ophelia said. “More marauding wolves killed the ewe.” She tried to sound crisp and rational, but her guts were twisting. If there were man-eating wolves roaming the countryside, she for one wasn’t eager to set foot outside.
“Alas, the villagers—and all of my servants among them—murmur their stories and tremble with fear,” Griffe said. “They believe the ewe’s death is not the work of wolves, or a rabid boar, or a human, but the work of their fabled beast.”
“The cook, Marielle, mentioned such a creature when she saw the vicar yesterday morning,” Ophelia said.
“The peasants here are grievously backward and superstitious. They have no village priest in Vézère, you know, no church. The villagers—my servants among them—have been whispering among themselves that the beast has been angered.”
“By us,” Larsen said, pointing to Ophelia, Banks, and then himself.
“Us?” Ophelia said.
“Interlopers,” Larsen said. “Enjoy their privacy, I understand.”
“One of the maidservants has already given her notice, and my groom has threatened to quit as well,” Griffe said.
“We must venture out into the wood without delay,” Larsen said, back to drumming his fingers. “What the beast needs is a bullet between the eyes.”
“We will set out on the hunt directly after breakfast,” Griffe said. “Luc tells me that the hounds are fed and watered and eager as eels to go.”
“Good morning, everyone,” Ivy said, sailing in. She stopped. “Why the long faces? If it’s about the slaughtered sheep, the maid Clémence already told me. Hideous, isn’t it?” Her eyes sparkled as she sat.
“Child, what is this?” Banks murmured, fingering a ribbon in Ivy’s curls.
“A silk ribbon, Papa,” Ivy said soothingly. “Only silk.”
Ophelia hid her frown in her coffee cup. For a moment, Banks’s neck had looked like it might pop.
* * *
On his way down to breakfast, Gabriel encountered Bernadette on the stairs. She was weeping.
“Mademoiselle Gavage. Pray, what is the matter?”
“Lord Harrington.” She grabbed the banister. “I did not hear you coming. I am—I am well, quite well.”
“Might I be of assistance? Is it the item stolen from you?”
Bernadette’s breath caught. “Who told you about that?”
“Only Miss Stonewall. She is most concerned for your happiness.”
“Oh. Dear girl.” Bernadette’s face looked hard. “It is true, I am most saddened by the loss of my . . . it was a brooch, you see, a hairwork brooch, a love token given to my father from my mother, and it is—oh, là—it meant so very much to me. I have upset myself searching for it again this morning.”
Gabriel offered a clean handkerchief, and Bernadette took it. “Perhaps it will turn up.”
Bernadette shook her head. “Diamonds, you see, were inlaid around the edge.” She blew her nose into the handkerchief.
“Ah.” In that case, the brooch would have been attractive to a thief, despite the hairwork, a sentimental touch that Gabriel had always found slightly repulsive. Lovers would snip a lock of their hair, or in a macabre vein, bereaved people would snip locks of hair from the deceased. The hair was looped, knotted, braided, and preserved under glass.
Bernadette said, “Once, some of our silver was stolen by a girl I had enlisted as a scullery maid when my own maids were convalescing after the measles. She was from two villages away, and I did not know her, and, well, she took the silver to a secondhand shop in the central street of Sarlat. To sell it, you see. Everyone is most keen to set out on the hunt this morning, particularly after a beast slaughtered one of the ewes in the village—”
“Good heavens.”
“—yet I am torn between going to the shop in Sarlat to see if the stolen things are there and—”
“Say no more,” Gabriel said. “Remain with your guests. Go on the hunt—look, the sun is shining. I shall ride into Sarlat and check every secondhand shop. I meant to go to town today anyway, as I must send a telegraph in order to work out what’s to be done with young Master Christy.”
“Oh, thank you, Lord Harrington. You are ever so kind.” Bernadette pressed the handkerchief into his hands. “Please, do not—do not mention this to anyone. I do not like to speak of that brooch.”
“Very well.”
* * *
“Cripes, I do not believe I shall be able to walk five minutes in these things,” Henrietta said. She collapsed onto a divan in her bedchamber.
“They’re only flat boots,” Ophelia said. “Surely you have worn flat boots before.”
“Not since early girlhood.” Henrietta smushed out her lower lip.
“Pouting is not going to work on me, Henrietta. I’m not one of your imbecile gentlemen.”
“You could have fooled me in that ridiculous hat. It resembles a top hat for a midget.”
“It’s for hunting, and anyway you told Artemis to lend it to me.”
“Did I?” Henrietta duckwalked to the mirrored wardrobe. She squawked. “A spot!”
“I don’t see anything,” Ophelia sighed. She’d only come to fetch Henrietta because the others were downstairs ready to set off on the hunt. She should’ve guessed she’d be sucked into a whirlpool of vanity.
“You don’t see it? It looks like that Italian volcano—what is it called? Mount Vestless?”
“Vesuvius.” Mount Vapid, more like.
“It is because of all that rich dessert Mr. Larsen forced me to shovel down after dinner last night. Chocolate mousse, and that berry tart, and more chocolate mousse. He said that he adores ladies with hearty appetites.”
“Does Mr. Larsen have anything to do with those flat boots?”
“He said he appreciates ladies who are able to manage themselves in proper hunting boots.”
“Are you managing, though?”
“Oh, do shut up, Ophelia. I have not had the luxury of wearing men’s boots day in and day out, as you have. Men’s boots don’t come in regular ladies’ sizes. Perhaps when you and Griffe are wed, you might share shoes with him. Just think of the saved expense.”
Ophelia kept her trap shut. Because Henrietta’s livelihood had always depended upon the enthrallment of gentlemen, she looked upon every other woman as a potential threat to her next meal. Insulting other ladies was like breathing to her.
“By the by,” Henrietta said, “it wasn’t very subtle of you, smearing pâté on that veil. There are other ways to delay a wedding, you know. Find yourself a good strong purgative and come down with influenza on the morning of the wedding.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“If you say so.”
* * *
Bernadette had assumed that Gabriel’s motive for searching for her brooch in Sarlat was gallantry. So he experienced more than one twinge of conscience as he rode down the château drive. In fact, he had wished for an opportunity to pay another call on Madame Genepy. He would go into Sarlat after that.
His thoughts floated to Miss Flax as he rode along the gritty beige road. His feelings for her, last month in Paris, had seemed like a perfect love, emerging from nowhere fully formed. But she had so easily affianced herself to Griffe, and with that ease, and with the deception it entailed—and she really meant to marry him!—and Gabriel’s perfect love had dissolved away. Miss Flax was an intriguing young lady, he allowed. But she was also a confidence trickster with a proclivity for quandaries. Not to mention a weakness for absurd disguises.
And perfect love? An illusion. A fevered wish.
Gabriel refused to face the withered, dying thing, deep inside of him, that despaired that perfect love did not, could not, exist.
Madame Genepy’s granddaughter Lucile answered at Gabriel’s knock. She hugged a ratty shawl close.
“You again?” she said in French, giving him a sour once-over.
“Good morning, madame. I was passing on my way to town and wondered if Madame Genepy might be well enough to tell me more of her tale.”
“She’s sleeping. Heart’s not well.”
“Has she seen a doctor?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“I beg your pardon.” Gabriel paused, reluctant to leave, hungering for just one more snippet of the tale. “Tell me, has your grandmother ever read the de Villeneuve version of the Beauty and the Beast tale?”
“She does not know how to read. I have read it, though.” Lucile curled her upper lip. “De Villeneuve stole the tale.”
“Stole it? From whom? Did Madame de Villeneuve perchance travel to this village?”
Lucile shook her head. “My great-great grandmother—Osanne was her name—went to work as a domestic servant in Paris when she was young. Times were difficult those days—or so Grandmother says—with famine that struck the village and the animals of the forest alike.” Lucile clutched the shawl tighter at her throat.
Gabriel wondered if she was thinking of the slaughtered ewe.
Lucile went on, “Osanne found work in the household of Madame de Villeneuve. She must have told her mistress the tale—for she was, after all, a storyteller, always eager for a willing ear. Madame de Villeneuve changed the tale, of course, adding things here and there, leaving things out. I once read the tale in an edition in the bookshop in Sarlat. Fanciful trash. It bears little resemblance to Grandmother’s tale.”
“In what way?”
“Oh.” Lucile looked past Gabriel’s shoulder to the road, and she stepped back a little. “The house is growing cold, me standing here with the door open.”
“Very well.” Gabriel turned to go, but then stopped. “Your grandmother’s tale made mention of palaces of stone—castles, she said. Is there a particular castle in this vicinity to which she referred? Local sites sometimes correspond to local tales.”
At first Lucile’s face was blank, but then something sly crept in. “Yes. One of the ruined castles up the valley. I could take you there if you like—you will need someone to show you around. Parts of it have crumbled away, and more are in danger of giving way and collapsing into the river below, but I know which parts are safe. There are certain pictures carved into the stone that might interest you. Pictures of beasts.”
Gabriel’s fingertips prickled. “I would very much like to go. As will, I am certain, other guests from the château—those who are weary of the hunt by tomorrow, of course.”
“Might we leave at ten o’clock in the morning? I could walk up to the château, then, if, of course. . . .”
“Splendid, and yes, I will of course pay you for your time. Good day, madame.”
11
Twenty minutes later, Gabriel rode into the center of Sarlat. Its tight streets and carbuncled, teetering buildings were relics of the town’s medieval prosperity. This century had left the town behind. Although it was still beautiful, it seemed unable to rouse itself from an enchanted half doze, wedged at the bottom of two intersecting valleys. The railways had bypassed it.
Men hunched at their pipes and morning wine at inn windows. Shopkeepers opened their doors to admit fresh air. Women in cloaks chattered, children frisked towards school, and two dogs snuffled in a slushy alleyway.
After riding up and down the central street twice, Gabriel finally spotted the secondhand shop Bernadette had mentioned. Its sign was faded to a collection of golden paint flecks, and the window was so grimy that he had at first taken it to be untenanted. But then the door swung open, bell jangling, and someone tossed out a hissing cat.
“Shoo!” a man said. The door slammed.
Gabriel found an iron ring to tie his horse to and went inside the shop. Dust tickled his nose, and the floorboards moaned.
“Oui?” the shopkeeper said, popping out from behind a shelf of old books. His gray hair was parted exactly down the middle and plastered with oil.
“Good morning,” Gabriel said in French. “I wished to inquire if you have purchased any new items in the past day.”
“You wish to buy or”—he peered closely at Gabriel—“you have had something stolen?”
“Buy.”
“Good. Because I do not, do not, deal in stolen goods. I am always very careful to ask. I can s
pot a liar a mile off.” The shopkeeper tapped his temple. “It is all about the eyes and the way they move. You, for example, I knew instantly that you were lying when you said you did not have anything stolen, by the way you looked into my eyes and away. Only liars do that, you see.”
“Fine. I am looking for stolen items. But I will pay for them.”
“I see, I see.” The shopkeeper bustled behind a counter. “And do you intend to involve the . . . police? Do not lie to me, monsieur.”
Gabriel had meant to involve the police, if he did indeed find the items stolen from the château. But this shopkeeper was twisting his arm. “I will not involve the police. Now, pray show me what you have acquired in the past day.”
The shopkeeper pulled a felt-lined tray from the display counter and set it on top.
“Amethyst bracelet, fine filigree work, solid gold, old gold—and this hairwork brooch—see the diamonds?”
“I’ll purchase both. Anything else? This may seem peculiar but, perchance did the seller bring a jawbone with these pieces of jewelry?”
“A jawbone? Good heavens, no. The, ah, seller, brought only the bracelet and the brooch. Now, a different seller brought in a violoncello with only one small crack in the—”
“No, thank you.” Gabriel brought out several bank notes and placed them, one by one, on the counter. “Tell me about the person who brought you the jewelry yesterday.”
“I simply couldn’t.” The shopkeeper gazed meaningfully at the bank notes.
Gabriel brought out another bank note and placed it with the others.
“The cook from Château Vézère—I know her by sight because her brother cleans the gutters of my house and she sometimes—”
“The cook!”
“Could I interest you in a pair of spectacles?” The shopkeeper pulled out another tray. “Not a single scratch on the lenses.”
“No, thank you. Good morning.” Gabriel shoved the bracelet and brooch in his greatcoat pocket and left.