by Maia Chance
After several more minutes of climbing, they arrived on a shelf of limestone. They heard gentle scrabbling sounds coming from behind a boulder. They crept close to the boulder and peeked over.
Tolbert crouched beside a satchel. He found something inside—a lamp—lit it, and, taking the satchel, ducked into the black mouth of a cave. His lamp illuminated smooth stone walls before he turned a corner and disappeared.
“I’d pay a nickel to see what he was up to in there,” Miss Flax whispered.
“He is a zoologist. I have no doubt he is searching for fossils.”
“Oh, indeed? Then why is he being so secretive about it, saying he’s studying in his chamber when he’s really gallivanting?”
“We might chalk it up to a pathologically secretive nature. He is not keen to discuss his research, I have noticed. Come, let us go back down and join the others. It would not do for Tolbert to see us spying on him.”
“Oh, fine,” Miss Flax said, glancing with longing at the cave’s mouth.
They picked their slippery way down.
“Tolbert might notice our footprints,” Miss Flax said.
“Yes. Nothing to be done about that. I’ll come back later, after he has gone.” As soon as the words were out of Gabriel’s mouth, he knew he’d live to regret them.
Miss Flax narrowed her eyes. “You cannot possibly mean to edge me out of this when it was I who first discovered his footprints.”
“Of what concern is it to you what Tolbert is doing in there?”
“I’m investigating the murder. And the stolen jewelry.”
“Oh yes—I’ve found that.”
“What?” Miss Flax spun to face Gabriel so quickly, she lost her footing and slipped. Gabriel caught her arm and steadied her. She was panting. “You found the stolen jewelry?”
“Yes. It seems the cook sold it to a secondhand shop in Sarlat. I surmise that she stole the items from Mr. Knight’s trunk. I bought the items back.”
“Including a ruby ring?”
“A ruby ring? Why, no. Only Miss Banks’s bracelet and a hairwork brooch belonging to Mademoiselle Gavage. You don’t mean to say that your engagement ring has gone missing?”
Miss Flax bit her lip and blinked up at the sky. Gabriel would have fancied she was trying not to cry, except he could not picture Miss Flax crying. When she looked at him again, her eyes were dry. “Yes. My engagement ring has gone missing, and if I don’t find it soon, then—” She stopped herself.
“Then what?”
“Never mind.”
“Perhaps the cook still has it.”
“All right, but what if she doesn’t? And even if she does, how will I get it back?” Miss Flax started down the hill again. “One thing’s clear—I had never thought of the cook as the murderer. She seemed honestly in hysterics when she was standing over the vicar’s body. Still, she could’ve been pretending. I must quiz her. If she stole my ring . . .” Miss Flax shook her head.
Was the ring of such sentimental value to Miss Flax? Or perhaps it was only that she did not wish to upset Griffe by having already lost a family heirloom.
Either way, Gabriel remembered his status as Miss Ivy Banks’s betrothed and withdrew into silence.
At the bottom, they turned up the stream path. Presently, they rounded a bend.
“Look, there are the others—they have stopped,” Miss Flax said. “I wonder if Madame Dieudonné has finally crippled herself with her high-heeled boots.” She slanted Gabriel a sidelong glance. “Listen here, professor, don’t you dare sneak off to that cave without me, do you hear?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I know that bland look on your face. You have no intention of letting me in on your excursion to the cave. Come to think of it, professor, why is it that you’re so keen on spying on Tolbert?”
“It is not Tolbert I am interested in. It is his fossilized jawbone.”
“The tooth, you mean.”
“Not precisely. I’d like to see the entire jawbone from which the tooth fell. If, that is, it even exists. I only glimpsed a sketch of it in Tolbert’s notebook.”
“Why? That can’t possibly have anything to do with a fairy tale, and yet I see that mad glow in your eyes. Wait. It is about a fairy tale, isn’t it? Are there fossils in fairy tales?”
Gabriel adjusted his spectacles. “Of course the fossil has nothing to do with a fairy tale.” That was precisely what he’d been hoping. “The very thought.”
“Hmph.”
“Why do you wish to visit the cave?”
“I wish to see what Tolbert is up to. He’s sneaky. The château is chock-full of sneaky folks, and one of them stole that ring.”
“Fair enough.”
Gabriel had no intention of bringing Miss Flax along on his return to the cave. Creeping about with her in the nighttime woods was not a safe proposition. For a variety of reasons.
* * *
Ophelia knew that Professor Penrose had no intention of bringing her along on his excursion to that cave. Well, she’d see about that.
They joined the hunting party. Only Ivy threw them a narrow look; the others were clumped around the pack of dogs, who lay together in the snow.
“What is the matter with the dogs?” Ophelia asked Bernadette.
“They became slower and slower, and now they—well, look at them. All they wish to do is go to sleep. I fear they are ill.”
The dogs were curled into tight balls with their backs pressed against one another for warmth.
“Perhaps they are weary from all that running around,” Ophelia said.
Forthwith said, “It appears to me that they’ve been fed some sort of sleeping draught—probably at luncheon.”
Sleeping draught? Madame Dieudonné took sleeping draughts. What if she had fed some to the dogs to cut short the hunt? Then she wouldn’t have to admit to being too old to keep at it.
“Must call off the hunt, now,” Banks said. “Turn around, send for servants to bring the dogs back to their kennel.”
“But we are so close to the beast, I feel it,” Larsen said.
“Look, the sun is already setting.” Forthwith pointed to the orange sun behind bare trees. “We might come back tomorrow. Brr! Chilly out here.” He rubbed his arms.
“It isn’t so dark,” Ivy said. “It feels so fresh and wild at this time of day, with all these wonderful shadows.” She stroked her wooden shotgun stock.
Banks watched his daughter closely. It looked to Ophelia as though he would’ve liked to reprimand Ivy but couldn’t think of what for.
They left the dogs and trekked back to the château through the falling dusk.
13
No sooner did Ophelia sit down in her bedchamber to unlace her hunting boots than there was a rap on her door.
Bernadette pushed through. Her eyes and nose were pink. “How could you do it, Mademoiselle Stonewall? You could have simply told me it was not to your liking.”
“Do what? You can’t mean the dogs.”
Abel, breathless, appeared beside Bernadette. “There you are, Miss Stonewall. Take your jolly sweet time, don’t you? I’ve made the most marvelous discovery.”
“Not now.” Ophelia turned back to Bernadette. “What is the matter?” A mad hope rose up that it had something to do with the missing ring. Maybe Bernadette had found it.
“But if you did not do it, then who?” Bernadette said.
“Perhaps if you’d explain . . .”
Bernadette swung around. Ophelia followed her to her private boudoir. Abel trotted along behind them, making impatient noises.
Bernadette pointed. The wedding gown, which Ophelia had last seen that morning pinned for alteration, lay crushed on the carpet. Pins shimmered nearby.
“It was not you who tore out the pins?” Bernadette asked.
“No!”
“Have you got any more of these chocolate drop things?” Abel asked, holding out an empty dish. His cheeks bulged.
Bernadette wept into her hands.
“I am very sorry,” Ophelia said gently, touching Bernadette’s shoulder.
Bernadette jerked away. “Be gone.”
“You don’t really suppose that I—”
“Is this all but a great jest to you?”
“It was not I who did this, Bernadette. Please believe me. Come along, Master Christy.”
“She thinks you’ve got cold feet, then?” Abel said cheerfully once he and Ophelia were out in the corridor. “Or maybe it’s all a ruse to make you look bad because she thinks you’ll usurp her as lady of the manor, banish her to one of those drafty dowager’s cottage things with just enough of an allowance for bread crusts and—”
“What is it that you wished to tell me? Did Gerard return?”
“No.”
Drat. Ophelia tried to walk faster than Abel, but he simply broke into a jog.
“Golly those were splendid chocs,” he said, panting. “Well, I was hot on the trail of a rose beetle today—in the orangerie, you know—and I saw the most peculiar thing. There’s this fountain in there, a stone face sort of spouting water into a pool with lily pads and all that?”
“I saw it, yes.”
“Well, there’s a great fuddle of dead goldfish floating in there.”
“That is very sad, but I really must go and prepare myself for dinner.”
“I believed you were a clever lady, Miss Stonewall—for an American, I mean.”
“I am—” Ophelia held her tongue. Had she really been about to defend her intelligence to this spotty, thirteen-year-old rotter? “What am I supposed to make of dead goldfish in the orangerie?”
“You wondered what happened to those traveling sickness tablets—the empty bottle, remember?”
Ophelia stopped in her tracks. “Do you mean—?” She glanced up and down the dim corridor and then lowered her voice. “Are you suggesting that the goldfish were poisoned with the traveling sickness tablets? That the tablets were dumped into their pool?”
“Precisely.”
“That the murderer dumped them into the pool? To make it look as though the vicar had swallowed the lot?”
Abel nodded. He had a smudge of chocolate on his nose. “This means the vicar most likely died eating belladonna berries—as we have suspected all along.”
“But this is proof.”
“You ought to speak to the lady to whom those traveling sickness tablets belonged. Perhaps she saw something.”
“Ivy?”
“Don’t like her much?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You look like you’ve taken cod liver oil.”
It was true; Ophelia hadn’t once quizzed Ivy about the vicar’s death. Ivy had a prickly sort of atmosphere around her. “I’ll ask her tonight.”
But first, the cook Marielle. “Will you accompany me to the kitchen, Master Christy?” Ophelia said. “I require a translator.”
“You must say please.”
“Please.”
“All right.”
They set off.
“Don’t you intend to pick my brains on the matter first?” Abel asked. “Or am I merely a linguistic dray horse?”
“Someone could overhear.”
“Well, then whisper, for pity’s sake.”
“It’s—”
“I won’t translate if you don’t tell me.”
Ophelia unclenched her teeth. “Oh, fine.” She whispered as softly as she could and still hear herself over Abel’s wheezing; they were walking briskly. She explained how the professor had discovered that Marielle had sold Ivy’s bracelet and Bernadette’s brooch, and that Marielle might still have a ring that Ophelia was missing.
“A ring? You never told me you are burdened with ulterior motives.” Abel scrunched his mouth.
Ophelia shrugged. “Now, I had figured that Mr. Knight or someone else had made the rounds of the château that night, pinching valuable items from various bedchambers, and then stashing them in Knight’s trunk. At first when I heard that Marielle had sold some of the missing jewelry, I assumed she’d gotten into Knight’s trunk after the police said it was to be left behind. A kind of theft of opportunity, you see.”
“Peasant,” Abel said.
“However, now it occurs to me, what if Marielle is the murderer?”
“What motive could she have?”
“I don’t know. Either way, I must speak to her.”
Dinner preparations were under way in the kitchen. Something that looked an awful lot like a ground squirrel was roasting on a spit in the fireplace. Ophelia gulped. Surely they wouldn’t serve ground squirrel. This was Château Vézère, not Arkansas.
Marielle stirred a copper vat on the stove, her back to them. The two kitchen maids were at the table, but although vegetables were mounded on one end, they were at work with fabric and scissors at the other end. The maids jumped when they saw Ophelia and Abel enter. One maid squeaked, and Marielle swung around. She waved her wooden spoon, gravy flying, and scolded in French.
“She wishes for us to leave,” Abel said to Ophelia, backing up, “so why don’t we simply—”
“No.” Ophelia gently took Abel’s shoulder. “Stay.”
Marielle was still yelling, and the maids were bundling up their cloth and scissors and stuffing them into a basket. The cloth was pale gold and rough-looking, like homespun flax. Why did the maids seem so guilty? Was it only because they weren’t working on dinner?
“Ask Marielle where she was during the night the vicar died.”
“That’s rather blunt, don’t you think?”
“Go on.”
Abel sighed, and said something to Marielle.
Marielle’s face flushed and her eyes narrowed. She shouted, gesticulated with her spoon, and turned back to her pot.
“She says we had better leave or there will be no dessert for me,” Abel said, panic edging his voice up half an octave. He scampered up the stairs.
Ophelia followed. “She said more than that.”
“She said she stayed at her sister’s house in the village that night, because her sister has a baby and is desperate for sleep.” Abel wrinkled his nose. “I do hope that wasn’t a rodent down there on the spit.”
That was that. Marielle had an alibi. But she still could’ve stolen the ring—not to mention Tolbert’s jawbone.
* * *
In the salon before dinner, Ophelia asked Ivy if she’d seen or heard anything amiss the night the vicar had died.
“Why, no,” Ivy said. She was leafing idly through a folio of scenic prints. “Why do you ask, Miss Stonewall?”
“Just . . . curious.” How feeble that sounded.
Ivy made a dainty yawn.
* * *
At dinner, Griffe said, “The dogs were brought back to their kennel by horse cart, and I am told they are still sleeping soundly now. I instructed my man Luc to keep a close eye on the kennel all night. Locked it tight myself, with a new lock.”
“You are the only one in possession of a key?” Professor Penrose asked.
“Of course. My dogs were drugged! Raised them from whelps, I did, each one, and to think some harm might befall them—what if the drug does not wear off? What if—”
“There, there,” Bernadette murmured. “I am certain they will awake fresh and healthy in the morning.”
“They had better.” Griffe gulped from his third or fourth goblet of wine, narrowly studying his guests as he did so. A bread crumb had somehow become lodged in his eyebrow.
“The dogs were drugged during luncheon,” Ophelia said, “with the food they were given, correct?”
Silence fel
l.
Ophelia went on, “So what if the drugs were really meant for people, not dogs?”
“Nei, nei,” Larsen said, shaking his head. “Someone meant to cut short the hunt. Spoil the sport for the rest of us.” He gnawed angrily on a small bone.
“I fancy she’s attempting to distract us from the matter of the wedding gown,” Ivy stage-whispered to Bernadette.
Bernadette stifled a sob in her napkin.
Penrose intervened by telling everyone about the excursion to a ruined castle he’d arranged for ten o’clock the next morning. “I fancy that will keep us all amused while the hunting dogs convalesce.”
Everyone but Larsen agreed that a ruined castle sounded amusing. Nothing was going to keep Larsen off the trail of the beast.
* * *
After midnight, Gabriel bundled himself in greatcoat, boots, and a fur cap. He stashed a lantern, matches, and a loaded Webley Longspur revolver in various pockets and left the château through the kitchen door. He crunched across hardening slush.
As he passed the stables, he heard the soft nickering of a horse within, and then a form appeared out of nowhere.
Gabriel froze, every nerve in his body zinging. “Who goes there?” he whispered in French. His breath puffed in the air.
The form moved closer. “I don’t know what you’re saying, Professor, but I reckon your accent is impeccable.”
Gabriel smacked a palm to his forehead. “Miss Flax! What in the deuce are you doing out here? Are those trousers you’re wearing?”
“Borrowed them from my fake brother. Hiking up to that slope in a hoop skirt once was one time too many. Shall we go?”
“You’re not coming. This is madness.” Gabriel glanced back at the darkened château. Please God, that motion in a second-story window was only his fancy.
“I am going, whether you like it or not.” Miss Flax strode—yes, strode, for she wore a pair of baggy trousers beneath her great furry cloak—towards the formal gardens.
Gabriel had no choice but to follow. Miss Flax was infuriating. Intractable, stubborn, and by God, she would stop at nothing to do exactly what she wished.
Gabriel wondered why the corners of his mouth kept twitching upwards.