Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna

by Maia Chance

  They reached the bottom of the formal gardens and traversed a bridge over the ornamental canal, which separated the bottom of the gardens from the vineyard.

  “Are you not afraid, Miss Flax?” Gabriel asked as they passed between gnarled rows of grape vines. This was an old vineyard; the branches were so tangled and thick one couldn’t even see two rows over.

  “Afraid? No. Why would I be?”

  “Murderers, thieves, and rampant beasts are not enough to frighten you?”

  “I do not have the luxury of wallowing in fear, professor. I’ve got a task at hand, and I mean to keep it in my sights.”

  “Collaring the murderer and finding your precious ring.” Blast. Why had he said it like that?

  “It’s not precious,” she said stiffly. “I mean to say, it’s surely quite valuable, but the point is . . . well, I’ll be straight with you, professor. I must find the ring in order to give it back to the count.”

  Everything inside of Gabriel went still. Hope struggled to the surface. “Why?”

  “To break things off. I never meant—this ruse has already gone on too long. I’ve only kept it up on account of Henrietta.”

  “I did not know you were so obligated to her.”

  “I’m not. Not exactly. I can’t. . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll think poorly of me.”

  “I don’t believe I’m capable of it.”

  “You don’t understand what it is to be flat broke and completely alone in the world.”

  “Flat broke, no. But alone? I daresay I do know what that is like.” Gabriel concentrated on the rhythm of his feet on the rutted earth. After he’d left Miss Flax in France three weeks earlier, he had never felt more alone.

  Miss Flax was silent, and Gabriel waited. At last she blurted, “I lost all the money I’d saved—someone stole it, really—all the money for my passage back to America, and Henrietta said she’d pay me to keep up the engagement for two more weeks, bring her to this hunting party, see, for she’d heard Mr. Larsen would be here, and, well, it’s as clear as day what her intentions are with him.”

  “Yes.”

  She paused. “You don’t think poorly of me?”

  “No, Miss Flax. I only worry about how Griffe will take it when you break things off.”

  “I know. I feel awful about it. And I’m running out of time. That’s why I had to come along with you tonight, don’t you see? I must find some new clue to help me figure out who did in Mr. Knight. I’ve been up against a brick wall, and Tolbert is just as much of a suspect as the rest.”

  “I could have reported to you all I saw in the cave.”

  “Perhaps, but you might not see what I see. You’re looking for other things. Fairy-tale things.”

  Gabriel could not argue with that.

  They’d reached the wood. They found the path the hunting party had taken earlier.

  “Should we light a lantern?” Miss Flax whispered.

  Gabriel looked up. The moon was three days from full, and only a few filmy clouds obscured its light. “I think we ought to save the lantern fuel for the cave, if we are able. We do not know how deeply it goes into the earth.”

  “Do you reckon we’ll find the cave again?”

  “I am certain of it.” In the Crimea, years ago, Gabriel had been a cavalry scout. He had a good head for terrain.

  14

  They found the entrance to the cave. Ophelia’s boots were leaking, and she had to keep pulling up the trousers she’d nicked from Forthwith. Still, trousers beat skirts by a mile.

  Penrose lit his lantern, and they ducked inside. The light bounced off shiny-damp limestone walls, about ten feet high. The tunnel took a curve a few paces in. The floor was fine gravel, and it appeared to be well-worn by feet. Hopefully human feet.

  The cave narrowed and they were forced to bend forward. Then suddenly, the cave opened out into a spacious cavern. Penrose held the lantern high to take the cavern’s measure. It was roughly the size of Château Vézère’s dining room, with vaults of limestone marred by scratches and by black and reddish dirt. . . .

  Ophelia’s breath caught. No, not scratches. Not dirt. “Holy Moses,” she breathed. “Pictures.”

  Penrose angled his lantern. Animals seemed to waver and leap. Exquisite, sweet-faced animals etched into the stone walls and tinted with black and brown-red pigment.

  “Look, a herd of buffalo,” Ophelia said. “And is that a deer?”

  Penrose only nodded, his eyes riveted to the pictures. His profile was almost boyish with wonder, and Ophelia felt a mysterious tug.

  They moved slowly alongside the wall. A bear here, with a lovely-shaped head. Then a sort of furry elephant. A lion. A snake. As Penrose tilted his lantern this way and that, the shadows from the stone’s natural bumps and divots made the animals almost seem to move.

  “Who made these?” Ophelia asked.

  “I don’t know, but surely people very long ago, for much of the color has been drained away by seeping moisture—see?”

  “This is most certainly what Tolbert was visiting this afternoon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you suppose he keeps telling everyone he’s in his chamber studying, when he’s really roaming about the countryside?”

  “Tolbert is, shall we say, jealous of his work. He doubtless intends to document this carefully, in academic style, before sharing it with anyone. He’ll wish to get all the credit for its discovery. I must document this somehow. Photography would never work in here, even with many lanterns. Perhaps paper tracings—”

  “What’s this?” Ophelia had almost stepped on something at the base of the cave wall.

  Penrose crouched and held the lantern over it. “Good God,” he muttered. “Is it . . . a shrine?”

  Small earthenware dishes held what appeared to be chocolate drops, purple berries, and loose pearls. A clay vase held a red-and-white-striped rose.

  Churches in New England didn’t have shrines. They didn’t even have stained-glass windows.

  “Pearls,” Ophelia said. “Madame Dieudonné was missing a pearl necklace.” But—she looked carefully at the shrine—no ruby ring. Still, the pearls connected the shrine, very loosely, to the missing ring. There was hope yet.

  “This resembles the offerings people of the Orient assemble for their gods or ancestors,” Penrose said.

  “Those are belladonna berries, professor.” The skin of Ophelia’s back felt all itchy and crawly, and she stole a glance to the black gap where the cave continued into the earth. Someone could be back there. Watching.

  “Miss Flax,” Penrose said slowly. “Look at this.” He lifted the lantern, illuminating the picture on the wall above the shrine.

  Heavens to Betsy. A carved, black-painted beast, half man, half boar, undulated in the light.

  * * *

  The body of the beast was like a man’s, although the feet seemed—Gabriel squinted—yes, they seemed to have hooves. But the head! It was unmistakably that of a furry boar, with large pointed tusks and tiny round ears.

  A slight crunching sound made Gabriel and Miss Flax freeze. Their eyes met.

  Silence.

  Gabriel knew that somewhere in the shadows, someone or something lay in wait.

  Miss Flax, wide-eyed, in those awful trousers, seemed at once horribly vulnerable and dear beyond measure. The pistol tucked into Gabriel’s waistband felt newly heavy. He picked up the lantern and slowly stood, willing himself not to exude the essence of fear in case whatever was watching was an animal.

  “Come,” he mouthed to Miss Flax, wrapping his free hand around her wrist. “Slowly.”

  She stayed very close to him as they walked steadily out of the cave.

  They emerged into the cold, damp night. The moon glowed whitely above. The air tasted of soil and rot
.

  “Shouldn’t you extinguish the lamp?” Miss Flax whispered as they started down the rocky, ice-slicked slope. “So they can’t see us?” She tugged her wrist free of his hand so she could climb.

  “Wild animals are afraid of light.” Gabriel longed to grab her wrist again, to enfold her, keep her safe. If something were to befall her—

  “It wasn’t an animal in there,” Miss Flax said. “It was a human being. I could feel it. Animals don’t make one feel so frightened.”

  “Not any animals?”

  “No. Animals never seem evil, and I felt something evil up there in the cave.”

  Gabriel had felt that sense of evil, too. And he didn’t wish to mention it, since they were at least twenty minutes away from the château, but he still felt it now.

  “Who do you suppose set up that shrine?” Miss Flax whispered.

  “Tolbert.”

  “You sound certain.”

  “He is not the cold-blooded man of science he pretends to be. A few years ago he stole a great fossil lizard bone from his place of work in Paris.”

  “To sell it?”

  “No, that is the amazing part. I was told he had it arranged in his bedchamber on some sort of cushion.”

  “That’s nutty.”

  “Indeed. Yet human beings seem to have an impulse for religious worship, and zoologists are not immune.”

  “Do you suppose he was hiding in the cave tonight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, if Tolbert set up that shrine, he somehow got his hands of Madame Dieudonné’s pearls. Maybe he has the ring, too. Maybe he murdered Mr. Knight.”

  “What of a motive?”

  “Well, don’t forget I found a fossilized tooth in Mr. Knight’s trunk.”

  “How could I?”

  * * *

  No creature, human or beast, emerged from the shadows during their hike. Gabriel’s muscles relaxed when Château Vézère could at last be seen, a boxy silhouette beyond the vineyard.

  “Never thought I’d be so happy to see that house,” Miss Flax said softly. They passed between softly rattling rows of grapevines.

  “You did not once wonder what it might be like to call such a house home?” Gabriel kept his voice light. His ancestral home in England was, embarrassingly, perhaps six times larger than Château Vézère.

  “Mansions aren’t for the likes of me. Give me a trim little house with a shady porch and an apple orchard, and I’ll be as happy as a queen.”

  “And does Queen Ophelia live alone in this house?”

  “Yes. Unless friends need to be taken in.”

  “You never meant to marry?” Bother that tightness in his voice.

  “My father abandoned my mother, Professor Penrose. He was a schoolteacher, had gone to college in Boston, even, and I suppose he fancied himself at bottom too good for Mother. So when I was small, he just left. Mother supported my brother Odie and me by becoming a maid of all work on a farmstead—in New Hampshire. Worked like a slave for the lady of the house. Mrs. Beecher. Now she was a wicked witch out of a fairy tale. The thing I remember most about Mother was her hands. Red and shiny, her knuckles swollen, and her palms were as rough as a cat’s tongue. So gentle she was to Odie and me, though. I don’t remember Father, but Odie does. Did.” Silence.

  “Your brother is—?”

  “I don’t know. I lost track of him during the war. He signed himself up for a soldier, you see, and one day my letter to him came back from his camp unopened. I wrote to his colonel, but I never got a reply. I reckon that’s one way to tell a lady that her brother is dead.”

  “But he could be alive still.”

  “Don’t go trying to make me hope, Professor. He’s gone. Mother’s dead, my father may as well be dead, and to answer your question, yes, I’d rather live alone in a nice clean house with nobody bothering me—or leaving.”

  Miss Flax’s voice was clear and purposeful, but Gabriel heard the pain. For the first time he understood her iron-nailed stubbornness, her resolve to make the best of her life at all costs and—he eyed her baggy gent’s trousers—using any means necessary.

  “But you,” Miss Flax said, breaking the heavy silence, “you will soon be a married fellow, with a wife and children, and a mansion or two?”

  “I have an estate in England, yes.” Why did Harrington Hall suddenly sound utterly bleak compared to Miss Flax’s porch and apple trees? “These days I confine myself mainly to a town house in Oxford. I enjoy simplicity, Miss Flax.”

  “Does Miss Banks enjoy it, as well?”

  He didn’t answer, feeling obscurely reprimanded.

  They emerged from the vineyard and approached the stone bridge that arched over the ornamental canal and into the formal gardens. Moonlight-bleached statues of angels flanked the bridge.

  A figure sprang from behind one of the statues. Something was the matter with it. It was too bulky on top—

  Miss Flax screamed and stumbled backwards. The figure brought out some kind of club, swung it high above Miss Flax, and brought it down with a sickening thunk. Miss Flax collapsed.

  Gabriel cried out, lurched forward. He had only the briefest, confused impression of a boar’s head, glittering dark eyes, pointed white tusks, fur. Something horribly heavy smashed the top of his head. Fireworks sparkled, he was falling, and then all was silent black.

  * * *

  He was submerged in foul-tasting, icy dark water. The canal. He fought to the surface, gasping, the weight of the lantern and the pistol in his pockets dragging him down. He paddled arms and legs, swinging his head, searching.

  Where was Miss Flax? “Miss Flax!” he cried.

  Nothing.

  Why was this canal so blasted deep? He swam to the side. Moss slicked the stones. After several tries he finally got a finger hold. He heaved himself up and over the balustrade. Panting and shivering, he clambered to his feet.

  A dark lump on the snow. Fur cloak. Boots jutting.

  “Miss Flax,” he croaked, staggering over. He threw himself beside her and turned her face.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Professor?” she whispered. She lurched upright. “Where is that man who hit me?” She squinted into the darkness. “What a coward, wearing that silly costume.”

  Gabriel helped her to her feet. “We should not give chase. Allow me to see your head.”

  She rubbed her crown. “There’s a lump. Not bleeding. Who was that?”

  “Heaven knows. Tolbert? Let us go.”

  As they traversed the formal gardens, Gabriel peered into the shadows—left and right, left and right. No motion except waving branches and rolling clouds.

  They didn’t speak until they’d bolted themselves into the dim kitchen.

  “Someone’s not too happy about us seeing that cave, I’d guess,” Miss Flax whispered. She went to a bench along the wall, poured out a glass of water, and drank it down. “Water?”

  Gabriel nodded. She poured him a glass, and he gulped it. He still tasted the rank canal water.

  “Good night, Professor,” Miss Flax said. She hesitated.

  Their gazes snagged together and held for too long. Wordless, half-formed things clamored in Gabriel’s mind. “Good night,” he finally said.

  She left.

  Gabriel fell asleep wondering how he would explain the knob on his head to Miss Banks.

  * * *

  Ophelia woke with a pulsating headache and a foggy sense of dread. Then it all came back. The cave. The pictures. Madame Dieudonné’s pearls and the belladonna berries in that shrine. That ninny in the boar’s costume clobbering her over the head.

  She touched her head and winced, feeling a tender lump. Thank goodness for complicated hairstyles.

  She got out of bed, put on Artemis’s dressing gown, and went down the corridor to use the lavatory and t
he washroom. When she returned, Clémence was arranging a tray of coffee things on a table.

  “Bonjour,” Ophelia said.

  Clémence tossed her a scornful look and left without a word.

  For the first time, Ophelia looked at the clock. Twenty past nine. She had overslept. The excursion to the ruined castle was at ten o’clock, and she’d be darned if she missed the chance to see most of the folks who might’ve clobbered her last night all in one place.

  On her way to the wardrobe, her eyes fell on Forthwith’s trousers. Oh no. Clémence had hung them on the fire screen to dry.

  Would Clémence tell Bernadette or Griffe about the trousers? Surely she’d tell the other servants. Folks would know that she, Ophelia, wore trousers in secret. Or, worse, folks would suppose that fellows paid her nighttime visits and forgot their trousers when they left.

  Number one, Ophelia would return the trousers to Forthwith’s chamber and deny everything if anyone asked. Number two, she would find out if the driver Gerard had returned.

  The parakeet cheeped.

  And number three, she’d find some fresh newspaper to line the bottom of the birdcage.

  Ophelia poured a cup of coffee and doused it with cream. She took sips as she got dressed. One thing about the French: Their cows made the nicest cream.

  When Ophelia picked up Forthwith’s trousers to return them to his chamber, something fell out of a pocket. A hankie—a soiled hankie. Blotched with purplish, belladonna berry–colored stains.

  Hold it. Could Forthwith have killed the vicar? Forthwith was obviously scamming Larsen. If the vicar knew about the scam, if Forthwith thought his scam was threatened, well, that could be a fine motive for murder.

  Ophelia stuffed the hankie back into a trouser pocket. She went to Forthwith’s chamber and knocked. No answer. She went in, dashed to the trunk from which she’d stolen the trousers last night, stuffed them in, and hotfooted out of there.

  * * *

  Next stop, Gerard’s chamber. Ophelia heard rustling inside. At last. Unwilling to delay her confrontation even one second longer, she flung open the door.

  “There you are,” she cried.