Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna

by Maia Chance

  Where was the jawbone now? Had the cook kept it? If so, why? It certainly wasn’t fit for making soup. Perhaps she had not recognized its significance and had simply thrown it away on a refuse heap.

  At the Sarlat telegraph office, Gabriel sent a telegram to D. J. Montgomery, Esq., in London, Sir Percival Christy’s solicitor. The message indicated that young Abel was, in effect, stranded in the Périgord as the result of the sudden death of his escort. Gabriel requested that the solicitor advise him on how to proceed. He asked the telegraph office to send the response on to Château Vézère, no matter the extra expense.

  Next, Gabriel stopped at the police station, where he was told that Knight’s parish in Cricklade, Gloucestershire, had been heard from, and Knight’s body was already in transit. It would take three or four days to reach Cricklade.

  Gabriel set off for the château.

  He found himself eager to tell Miss Flax what he had learned. He pushed the sentiment to the farthest reaches of his mind, and forced himself to think instead of Miss Ivy Banks’s radiant face.

  * * *

  “You appear uneasy, Miss Stonewall,” Larsen said to Ophelia. They, along with Bernadette, Griffe, Banks, Ivy, Forthwith, Henrietta, and Madame Dieudonné, were filing through a muddy vineyard. Behind them loomed the château, in front of them a dark, dripping forest.

  Ophelia was nervous; a few paces ahead, Henrietta wielded a large, loaded shotgun. If no one was accidentally shot today, it would be a miracle.

  “Is this your first hunt, Miss Stonewall?” Larsen asked. “Or is it the talk of beasts? Pray do not worry; I have killed hundreds of beasts in my time.”

  “I confess this is my first time hunting,” Ophelia said.

  “My sister tells an untruth,” Forthwith said. “She’s a marvelous shot. Known as the Killer of Cleveland because of all the baby rabbits she’s bagged.”

  “Indeed?” Larsen said.

  “Oh. Yes,” Ophelia said, jabbing Forthwith with her elbow. “I meant, this is my first time hunting boar.”

  Ophelia had half hoped to stay behind at the château, because with everyone out hunting, she would’ve had free rein to search the house high and low for the ring. But she couldn’t think of a good excuse—sick headache always rang false—so here she was. With everyone together, however, she could observe the gentlemen with Madame Dieudonné to see if anyone showed signs of a prior acquaintance. And while she was at it, she may as well ask everyone what they thought of Knight’s death. Everyone was studiously avoiding the topic. It was downright eerie.

  As they walked, Griffe and Banks were engaged in subdued conversation. Ivy walked a little aloof, and she appeared to know precisely how to handle her gun. Madame Dieudonné hobbled along in high-heeled boots, wincing.

  A footman with an enormous pack strapped to his back brought up the rear. Bernadette had told Ophelia that their luncheon was in the pack.

  Larsen said, “I will tell you how it all occurs, Miss Stonewall, to set your mind at ease.”

  “I do pity the beasts,” Bernadette said softly. She opened her mouth to continue, but seeing Larsen’s sharp, reprimanding look, she closed it again.

  “Does one always pursue wild boars on foot?” Ophelia asked Larsen.

  “Yes. Boars keep to the thickets, you see, places horses cannot go. Places even we cannot go. That is what the dogs are for. They flush them out, surround them so there is no escape, and then we blast them. Not in the head, of course, for we like to keep those for trophies. In my villa outside of Bergen I have seventy-two beasts’ heads mounted on the walls.”

  “Sounds impressive,” Ophelia said.

  “Ever had roast boar, my dear?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, then you do not yet understand. Luscious, gamy, dark meat. There is the thrill of the hunt, too, the pursuit—Do you have him? Will he get away?—a contest of wills. Makes a man feel alive. Alive, I say!” Larsen shook his gun towards the sky.

  “You know, we really ought to have a roast boar for the wedding feast,” Forthwith said, smirking.

  “Splendid,” Larsen said.

  “I shall add it to the list,” Bernadette murmured, looking a little ashen.

  Ophelia reckoned it was time to bring up the topic of the dead vicar. “A pity Mr. Knight is not alive to hunt with us,” she said.

  “Knight?” Larsen looked befuddled. “But we did not know him, and vicars do not hunt—except for heathen souls. No, a man like that must tend to his sermons and such. No sport for them. Besides, he had a weak heart—that is what killed him, ja?”

  “There are belladonna berries in the orangerie,” Ophelia said. “There was also Miss Banks’s vial of traveling sickness medicine, empty, beside his body.”

  “Yes, that was most strange,” Bernadette said.

  Larsen grunted. “Why speak of such things when we are on the hunt? Let us enjoy the day, Miss Stonewall, and let the past alone.”

  This was like confabulating with a brick wall. “Bernadette, where is Monsieur Tolbert?” Ophelia asked.

  “Holed up in his room, at study. I told him even scholars can do with fresh air and exercise, but he insisted that he has no time for the out of doors.”

  “And where has Professor Penrose gone?”

  “The professor? He has”—Bernadette forced a little laugh—“he said he had some business to see to in Sarlat. He will catch up to us later—he insisted that he could track us through the wood by our footprints, although I do not understand how a professor could do such a thing.”

  Oh, Professor Penrose had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve.

  They reached the top of the vineyard and plunged into the trees. The wet tree boughs and trunks were black against the snow, which was unmelted in the shade. The bare undergrowth was black, too, and as the hounds bounded and squiggled forward, birds flapped up into the sky.

  Ophelia wouldn’t have said the forest was creepy, exactly. But it certainly wouldn’t be her first choice for a picnic.

  The party had rearranged itself upon entering the wood, so Ophelia found herself walking next to Griffe. He showed no sign of yesterday’s sinister humor.

  “I mean to have much of this forestland cleared someday,” he said. “All of it that lies on western or southern slopes, that is. The peasants struggle each year to bring in enough crops to feed themselves because they have been using the same small fields year after year. The soil is exhausted. It must lie fallow. They require more pastureland for their livestock, too. The methods they use now? Archaic, absolutement. One shepherd or shepherdess following a tiny herd about. They do not have enough livestock to slaughter for meat, and use them only for milk. I tell them over and again that this valley is rich, fertile, that they could all grow fat and prosperous if they would only clear more land and adopt scientific farming methods.”

  “They do not wish to do so?” Ophelia asked.

  “Stubborn, trapped in their traditional practices. If it is not the way of their forebears, why, they will not do it, either. Badly educated. I attempted to found a village school a few years ago, but after it was built and the schoolmaster was hired, not a single child went. They soon drove the schoolmaster away, claiming he was making their hens stop laying eggs. Mon Dieu, they would drive me out, too, if given the opportunity.” Something flickered in Griffe’s eyes. “They loathe me.”

  “But this is your land, is it not?”

  “But of course it is my land!” Griffe boomed.

  Ophelia blinked.

  “Forgive me. You have given me an idea, ma chérie. I knew you would make a most insightful and practical wife.”

  Not in a thousand years.

  “It is my land,” Griffe said, “and so I will clear it. With the trees gone, perhaps the peasants will at last be convinced to undertake new farming practices. A brilliant notion, Mademoiselle Stonewall.”
/>   “I did not really suggest—”

  “No need for modesty.” Griffe scooped up her hand and kissed it.

  Ophelia tried very hard not to flinch.

  “Tsk tsk, sister,” Forthwith murmured. “Wait until your wedding night, please.”

  Ophelia accidentally trod on Forthwith’s boot.

  * * *

  They crunched around in the woods for hours, following the lively dogs and never seeing a boar—although Larsen did point out some fresh boar’s droppings with glee.

  “We are drawing closer to the devil,” Larsen said. “I smell its musk.”

  “Oh dear,” Bernadette said, “perhaps we ought to stop for luncheon, then.”

  “Now?” Larsen bellowed.

  Bernadette shrank, but she said in a small voice, “We must revive ourselves for the, ah, showdown with the devilish beasts.”

  Larsen grunted. “You make a tolerable point.”

  Bernadette blushed and looked away. She harbored tender sentiments for Larsen, yet Larsen was oblivious. Just like a gentleman.

  “S’il vous plaît, we must stop,” Madame Dieudonné said, speaking for the first time. She creaked to a stump and sat. She looked weary and sallow underneath a thick layer of powder and rouge.

  Ophelia went to her. “Madame, are you well?” she asked softly.

  “Serves her right, coming along in those silly high-heeled boots,” Banks said.

  “She ought to be in a convalescent home,” Forthwith muttered, throwing stones at blackbirds in a tree. “Or in a coffin.”

  “I am well, my dear,” Madame Dieudonné said to Ophelia. “Beauty requires pain.”

  “All right,” Ophelia said doubtfully. “Where is Meringue?”

  “As much as le petit monsieur possesses a hunter’s spirit, he does not enjoy getting his feet wet, tant pis.”

  Bernadette said something to the footman in French. The footman removed his pack, and in minutes a small folding table was laid with clean linens, white wine, glasses, china and cutlery, cold meats, cheeses, bread, and fruit. Then the footman, sweating a little, stepped into the shadow of a tree.

  The hunting party dug in. The dogs were given water, off to the side, but their wagging tails and lolling tongues suggested they longed to get back on the trail of the boar.

  Ophelia sat down beside Banks on a fallen log. After an exchange of pleasantries, she took a deep breath and said, “Poor Mr. Knight. What do you suppose happened to him?”

  Banks froze, a chunk of cheese halfway to his mouth. “Happened? What ever do you mean, happened? Struck down by a heart ailment, the doctor said.”

  “But he did seem to crash around ever so much before he died. And there are belladonna plants in the orangerie.”

  “Belladonna? What does a well-bred young lady know about belladonna?”

  “I paid attention during my botany lessons.”

  “Well, don’t go weaving fanciful scenarios. Real life isn’t like those novels you young ladies weaken your minds with. My advice to you, Miss Stonewall, is not to trouble with such morbid matters. Mr. Knight is resting in peace now, and you, why, you have a forthcoming wedding. The greatest day of a woman’s life.” Banks made a hollow dry cough.

  “Papa,” Ivy called from several paces off.

  Banks, still coughing, waved her off.

  “He has had a terrible chest cold for a week now,” Ivy said to no one in particular.

  Once Banks’s coughing had subsided, Ophelia said to him, “His death seems to me terribly unfair, though.”

  “Unfair?” Banks said. “Unfair? By God, what has this to do with justice? Struck down by a heart ailment! I’ll tell you something, miss. I believe just as much as the next man in eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth—nay, I daresay I believe in it more. But whatever sins Mr. Knight may have committed in his life, well, perhaps he got off scot-free, dying early.”

  Ophelia’s skin crawled. No wonder Ivy had her scent bottles lined up like soldiers on her dressing table; she’d been raised by a tyrant.

  While Ophelia spoke with Banks, she watched Henrietta in animated, flirtatious conversation with Larsen. Henrietta perched on a rock, sneaking her flat-booted foot out from beneath her skirts and twisting her ankle about. Larsen juicily approved of the boots. Bernadette watched in dejected silence.

  Henrietta, blossoming under Larsen’s approval, took up her shotgun and began posing with it, tittering all the while.

  Banks said to Ophelia, “She does not appear to know how to use that thing. And just look at Larsen, grinning like a fool. Proves that all the gold in the world cannot buy sense.”

  Ophelia looked curiously at Banks. His voice was scalding with hate. Why? He and Larsen had claimed to know each other only by reputation. Could that have been a fib? Or did Banks only hate Larsen because Larsen was the richer fellow?

  Then, bang! Everyone ducked. From a tree, a blackbird plopped down onto the snow, dead as a doornail.

  “Did I do that?” Henrietta asked.

  Larsen was clapping. “You have bagged your first game, Mrs. Brighton. We shall make a fierce huntress of you yet.”

  Little did Larsen know that Henrietta was already the finest hunter of them all.

  12

  Gabriel had promised to catch up to the hunting party as soon as he returned from Sarlat. But by the time he’d left his horse with the château stable boy—who grumbled that the groom had abruptly quit—he found his mind fixed upon the jawbone. Although a fossil was not the sort of relic he usually concerned himself with, he felt he would like to—no, he must—see it for himself. Some deep intuition told him it was meaningful.

  If, of course, it existed at all.

  If the cook had taken all the stolen items from the vicar’s trunk, what had she done with the jawbone? Might she have stashed it in her chamber for some reason?

  After some bumbling about, Gabriel found the servants’ quarters on the top floor.

  He silently cracked a door. Occupied by a gentleman, judging by the trousers slung on the chair, the empty wine jug, and the unemptied chamber pot. Revolting. He closed the door and tried another. A bed and—

  “Excusez-moi,” a woman behind Gabriel said in a sharp voice.

  He sighed and turned. A plump blond maidservant glared up at him. “What are you doing, snooping in my room?” she asked in French. “What do you take me for? Simply because you are a fine, rich gentleman does not mean that you might have anything you like.”

  “I beg your pardon, miss, you are mistaken. I have only lost my way.” Gabriel bowed and moved towards the stair.

  “I have heard that line before,” the maid called after him. “I heard it just this morning!”

  Heard it from whom? Gabriel wondered. At any rate, perhaps it would be best if he went to join the hunting party now.

  * * *

  After the picnic luncheon, the footman was left behind in the forest clearing to pack up the mess and carry it back to the château. The hunting party set off once more.

  The dogs were fizzling out. Their tails wagged lower, and they walked rather than bounded. But still, the dogs sniffed along a hillside and then steeply down to a small, gushing creek. High above, scrubby oaks jutted from stone cliffs. Ophelia kept to the back of the party, mainly to avoid being in front of Henrietta’s shotgun. Bagging that blackbird had dangerously inflated her confidence.

  As Ophelia grabbed a tree trunk to step over a tangle of brambles, she saw footprints in the snow, off to the side of the trail.

  Footprints? None of the hunting party had strayed so far to the side. No one was paying Ophelia any attention, so she elbowed off the trail and bent to examine the prints.

  A man’s. Small, and still fresh—no dirt or twigs or melted edges. They led almost straight up the hillside.

  Was someone spying on the hunting party? One
of the servants or the villagers? This could be important.

  Fear made ship knots of Ophelia’s innards, but she refused to acknowledge that. Besides, she had a shotgun.

  The hunting party was moving away, but she could handily catch up with them; Madame Dieudonné was setting a sluggish pace.

  Ophelia hitched up her hem in one hand, tightened her grip on the shotgun with the other, and followed the footprints.

  * * *

  Gabriel found the hunting party’s track and hiked swiftly after them through a vineyard, into the wood, alongside a hill, and down into a valley.

  This was the same tributary valley in which he’d searched for the caves yesterday.

  After a while he heard voices up ahead but, oddly, no hounds baying. He was certain they would have brought out the hounds, which Griffe had said were kept specially for the boar hunt.

  Near the stream, Gabriel noticed a man’s boot prints and a woman’s slightly smaller prints—both fresh—leaving the main track and disappearing up the thicketed slope.

  Curious.

  Gabriel prided himself on various forms of restraint and self-discipline. However, restraining his curiosity had never been a strong suit. He followed the footprints.

  Bare, slick outcroppings of limestone and clinging plants made the going rough. He went up for about fifteen minutes. After hoisting himself up a particularly steep bit, Gabriel couldn’t find the footprints. Dash it all. He bent to look for them. He backed up—and bumped into a solid body.

  He swung around.

  Miss Flax, breathing heavily, eyes glowing, said, “Following me again?” A shotgun was slung over her arm.

  Did he only imagine that Miss Flax’s eyes glowed to see him?

  “Not for a moment did I suspect these were your prints all the way up here, Miss Flax.” The stream was almost directly below.

  “He’s up there,” Miss Flax whispered, gesturing with her shotgun farther up the slope.

  “Who?”

  “Tolbert. Those are his prints. I saw him. He’s been fibbing about being chained to his desk. Come on, before we lose him.”