by Maia Chance
“Oh, hullo,” he said without taking his eyes from the page. “How was the castle? Dreary as all get-out?”
“Master Christy. What are you doing in here?”
“Well, I fancied reading my book in peace, and my own prisonlike garret was giving me frostbite. Nice coal fire you’ve got in here.”
“Have you seen Gerard?”
“Don’t you think of anything else? As a matter of fact, he’s gone for good.” Abel forked a hunk of cake into his mouth and kept reading.
“What?”
Abel heaved a sigh and put down his book. “It seems Gerard had been harassing the maidservant Clémence, which greatly angered the Count de Griffe, and he sent Gerard packing while you lot were at the ruined castle. Quite a lot of roaring on the count’s side. Rather possessive of his servants, I’d say.”
Ophelia slumped into a chair. “But Gerard was probably bribed by the murderer, and now I’ll never be able to speak to him.”
“If it’s any consolation, I rather doubt he would’ve told you the truth.” Abel tipped his head towards the cake. “Would you like some? It’s awfully good, nice and buttery and nutty. Mademoiselle Gavage is an excellent baker when she isn’t bursting into tears or in a dither, yapping about veils and gowns and things.”
“Did Bernadette give you this cake?” Abel’s wedge was approximately one-quarter of an entire cake, and it hadn’t been neatly cut.
“More or less. Go on. Try it. I’m using the fork, of course, but you could break off a bit with your fingers. I won’t tell anybody.” He forked another bite into his mouth.
It was all so undignified, but Ophelia gave in. The cake smelled too scrumptious, warm and sugary. She broke off a piece.
Abel watched her. “Ripping, isn’t it? A local specialty, I understand. Gâteau aux noix. By the way, your parakeet looks melancholic. He could probably do with some live grubs. Birds don’t only eat seeds, you know.”
“Perhaps later.” Ophelia chewed more cake. The last thing she required was grubs writhing around in her bedchamber.
* * *
Ophelia could scarcely touch her luncheon. Lucky she’d eaten all that cake. Meanwhile, that skunk Ivy chattered gaily with her father and Bernadette about fossils, never looking at Ophelia. Tolbert did not join in this discussion. Silently, he hunched over his plate, toying with his fork. Madame Dieudonné ate with Meringue hidden on her lap. Gobbling sounds could be heard.
Henrietta still hadn’t come downstairs, and she’d sent word with the maid that she had a sick headache.
Just as well, since Ivy was onto her.
Professor Penrose had a pink scrape on his cheekbone, and his spectacles frames looked a little mangled. Ophelia hadn’t been able to ask him about these on the carriage ride back from the ruined castle. What had happened to him?
Larsen was still hunting, and Griffe was out on his estate making plans for the felling of the forest with the head woodcutter.
Everyone seemed to be waiting for something.
“Is there any news from the blacksmith regarding the repair of the whippletree?” Madame Dieudonné asked Bernadette.
“Why yes, there is—I had nearly forgotten. I have been in such a state over the wedding preparations. A village lad brought word that the ironwood required to replace the cracked whippletree will arrive today, so you will be able to set off for Bordeaux the day after tomorrow.”
“Ah, Dieu merci,” Madame Dieudonné murmured, feeding a bit of meat to Meringue.
“But my parcel has not yet arrived from Bordeaux,” Tolbert said in a whining tone. “I cannot leave the château before my parcel arrives.”
“I am certain we will be able to arrange something,” Bernadette said firmly. She couldn’t hide that she wished Tolbert out of her house.
Ophelia couldn’t blame her. And what was in that parcel?
* * *
After luncheon, Ophelia decided a snoop through Griffe’s study was in order. After all, with him out on the estate with the woodcutters, this could be her only chance. Maybe Madame Dieudonné really did know who had murdered Knight, and the whole thing would be sorted out tonight. But if she was mistaken, well, Ophelia ought not waste any time when she could be searching for clues. Not with a wedding scheduled for the day after tomorrow.
Of course, Ophelia wouldn’t go through with the wedding. But she still clung to a hope that she’d find the ring and be able to break it off with Griffe in a dignified way.
Griffe wasn’t the softhearted fellow she’d taken him for. What if he had killed Knight? Wait—what if he had stolen the ruby ring? If he knew Ophelia planned to break it off with him, taking his ring back would be one way to make things more difficult for her.
The study lay in a remote section of the main floor. Ophelia crept in. Tobacco smoke and stale wine mingled with a musky, confusing scent. Dozens of stuffed animal heads decorated the walls. Stags, a fox, wolves, even a tiger and a rhinoceros and—oh-ho—boars. Lots of boars. Although Ophelia had no way of knowing if a boar’s head had been stolen from the study, she would wager that that ninny last night had gotten his boar’s head mask from here.
A glass-fronted case displayed pistols and shotguns.
How comforting.
Empty wine bottles covered the desk, and the drawers held nothing but boxes of cigars and matches. But there was a promising cabinet behind the desk, filled with little drawers.
Ophelia dug through. Lots of papers, some personal-looking and some with a more businesslike appearance. Unfortunately, they were all in French. She supposed she could pinch some and ask the professor or Abel to translate, but she wouldn’t know where to begin. The papers were disorganized, and there were sheaves of them.
One caught her attention, though, because of the way it was crammed at the back of the bottommost drawer. Not as though anyone had wished to hide it; more like it had been stuffed away in a fit of anger.
She pulled it out and smoothed it on the desktop. It looked like a letter.
“Mademoiselle Stonewall. You have unearthed my secret.”
Why oh why did this continue to happen? Ophelia turned. “Count. I—”
Griffe shut the study door behind him. “No need to explain. What young lady would not rummage into the past of her fiancé?” He came to her side. He smelled of the fresh air, and he still wore a coat, hat, and gloves. He was breathing hard. He poked the letter with a fingertip. “The evidence of my youthful indiscretion.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My father died too young and as a result, I became the Count de Griffe too young, at only twenty-one. I was mad with grief over the loss of both my parents, and I was also drunk with all of my newfound power and wealth. In those days, if I saw something I desired, I took it. When I grew weary of it, I cast it aside. And I could not be sated by any vice.”
Ophelia’s eyes drifted to the empty wine bottles on the desktop.
Griffe went on, “I became a gambler, and one terrible evening in Paris, I lost a portion of my ancestral estate to a pockmarked, greedy fop from England.” He took Ophelia’s chin roughly in his hand and made her look up at him. “I have reformed.”
Ophelia wrenched her chin free and stepped back. She bumped the desk and a bottle fell over. Wine gurgled out across the desktop.
“I have reformed,” Griffe repeated.
“People don’t change,” Ophelia said. “And if you ever touch me roughly again, Count, I’ll tell your sister—everyone—about it. Is this why you’re so intent on hurrying up the wedding? Because you saw something you desired, and now you’re going to take it, no matter what?”
“I sense—I know—that you are attempting to get away.” Griffe’s cheek twitched.
“I’m not some—some rodent in a trap. I’m a person.” Ophelia took a deep breath. “Madame Dieudonné told me something peculiar this afternoon.
She told me that she was acquainted with you before she ever set foot in Château Vézère—”
“Lies!” Griffe slammed his fist on the desk.
Everything in Ophelia went cold and still. “I will not be shouted at,” she said in a quiet, dignified voice.
“If you mention that old woman’s loathsome falsehood to anyone, you shall never be the Comtesse de Griffe.”
“You would break off our engagement?”
“Oui.”
Tempting. Mighty tempting.
* * *
Ophelia returned to her chamber to compose herself. She wouldn’t admit to herself that Griffe had frightened her, exactly. But she couldn’t help wondering what else he could be hiding, besides a rotten temper, a checkered past, and a secret acquaintance with Madame Dieudonné. Griffe had even traveled to England in the past month. Could that journey have been somehow connected to Knight, or to the heart complaint tablets with the English label?
Bernadette was waiting in Ophelia’s chamber, eyes red, hair disheveled, hands clasped like a soprano’s.
Not this routine again.
“How could you, Mademoiselle Stonewall?”
Ophelia stopped in the doorway. “What is it?” Her eyes fell on the plate of cake crumbs Abel had left. “The cake. I—”
“Do not pretend to innocence. Garon told me that you are reluctant to marry this week—all the more reason, he quite wisely said, to bring it about—but for you to stoop as low as this? At the very least, I had supposed you were a young lady of dignity and—and normal appetites. I baked five gâteau aux noix this morning. Five! Two are utterly gone—now I see that you have devoured them—and the others were found dumped in the slop buckets destined for the village swine.”
“I didn’t know that it was—”
“I do not know if you wish to marry Garon or not, Mademoiselle Stonewall”—Bernadette had gone rigid and quiet—“although an ill-bred bourgeois like you does not deserve his devotion. However, it has become clear that you do not wish for me to make the preparations for your wedding. You reject Maman’s veil, gown, and, oui, the cake that was her own receipt. Should I assume you do not desire my presence even at the wedding ceremony?”
“Of course I wish for you to be there.”
“Then why this—this sabotage?”
Ophelia didn’t know what to say. Bernadette didn’t believe a word she said.
“I see that you have no answer,” Bernadette said. “Very well. Your silence is an answer unto itself.”
“Which chamber is Monsieur Tolbert’s?” Ophelia blurted.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Tolbert. He, ah, loaned me a book and I wish to return it.”
Bernadette narrowed her eyes but replied, “His chamber lies in the southwest corner. Good afternoon.” She glided stiffly out.
Ophelia looked at the plate of cake crumbs. Abel was certainly capable of eating two entire cakes, little rotter. But he didn’t seem mean-spirited enough to dump the others in slop buckets.
So who had? In Ophelia’s doggedness about discovering the vicar’s murderer, she hadn’t spent much time wondering who was sabotaging the wedding preparations. Ivy, perhaps, to make her, Ophelia, look bad, or dour Clémence, or even Bernadette, supposing her tears and indignation were a sham. . . .
Ophelia went to Tolbert’s chamber. He was so very secretive—the sneaking, the lies, and that mysterious parcel—so she knew almost nothing about him.
His chamber was locked.
* * *
There were hours to kill before Madame Dieudonné planned to tell Ophelia who she believed the murderer was. The clocks seemed to slow.
Ophelia decided to try to speak to Madame Dieudonné now; why wait? After all, the stagecoach was slated to leave soon. But when she went to Madame Dieudonné’s chamber, she heard snoring, and when she peeked in, she saw the old woman snoozing. Her wig sat on the table beside the bed, and Meringue was licking her pink scalp like a lolly. Meringue saw Ophelia and growled a warning.
Ophelia closed the door; she’d have to wait.
She put on her cloak and went for a walk around the formal gardens, circling them four times. That killed only an hour, but she didn’t wish to venture into the forest. She didn’t even go near the ornamental canal, where that costumed ninny had clobbered her last night.
Heading back to the house, she encountered Professor Penrose in the side court.
“Ah, Miss Flax. Good afternoon. I’ve just spoken with the old gardener, Luc, about the belladonna berries in the orangerie.” He lowered his voice. “In brief, he propagates the berries, along with other medicinal plants, in order to sell them to an apothecary as a way to earn a bit of extra money. He begged me not to mention it to the count, however, since evidently neither he nor Mademoiselle Gavage know of the scheme.”
“But surely Griffe and Bernadette know about the belladonna plants,” Ophelia said.
“Of course. It is Luc’s mercenary scheme that they are unaware of, and I also suspect that Griffe and his sister are not entirely aware of the number of belladonna plants in the orangerie. There must be a dozen.”
Ophelia decided not to tell Penrose about her plan to meet with Madame Dieudonné. Penrose had a bad habit of poo-pooing such notions. “What has happened to your spectacles, by the way?” Ophelia asked him. “They’re bent.”
“Ah, yes. I trod upon them by mistake.”
Liar.
“Well, I must go,” Penrose said, suddenly awkward. “Miss Banks and I are supposed to play chess. Would you care to join us? We could take turns.”
“No, thank you.” Ophelia didn’t know how to play chess, but she wouldn’t admit it to the professor. Besides which, the less time spent in Ivy’s company, the better.
“Well then, I will see you at dinner.”
After that, Ophelia went inside, bathed, and read some more of the de Villeneuve Beauty and the Beast that Penrose had given her. She was at the part where the snobbish fairies explained how the beast could only marry a lady of royal extraction. Ugh. She flung it aside.
* * *
“Perhaps we should all play a game,” Ivy said in the salon after dinner. Everyone was assembled except Tolbert, who’d left just after dessert. “Wouldn’t this château simply be splendid for a game of hide-and-seek? All these funny rooms and passages and hidden staircases? Not to mention the suits of armor.”
Banks smiled indulgently. “My little Ivy always did love hide-and-seek. Drove her governesses quite out of their skulls with all her hiding and creeping.”
Ophelia wasn’t surprised.
“Perhaps a game would be nice,” Madame Dieudonné said, winking a shriveled eyelid at Ophelia. Did she mean to tell Ophelia who the murderer was during the game? That didn’t sound too wise.
“I have a better idea,” Forthwith said. “I’ll show you the marvelous new trick I’ve been practicing.”
One could practically hear the inward groans. Forthwith’s nightly conjuring tricks had grown tiresome.
“A game would be most diverting . . . ,” Bernadette said.
Larson grunted. “Bit like hunting, what?” He hadn’t killed anything that day, and he was in a simmering temper as a result.
Henrietta said, “Oh, hunting. I did so miss hunting while I was abed today,” and angled her décolleté in Larsen’s direction.
“Perhaps tomorrow, my dear,” Larsen said vaguely.
Forthwith was sulky. “The trick won’t take long, you know, and I’ve been practicing my fingers to the bone with the thing.”
“Allow the young gentleman to show us his trick,” Griffe said, “and there will be time enough later for hide-and-seek.” He sent Ophelia a look that was both longing and hostile. Did he mean to corner her and demand an explanation for the cakes in the slop buckets?
“Why, thank you,” Forthwit
h said in a surly tone. He sprang to his feet and went to a crimson curtain hanging against one of the walls. Ophelia hadn’t noticed that. A gilt chair stood in front of the curtain.
“Goodness, what is that?” Bernadette asked. “Did the servants help you bring that curtain in?”
“A conjurer never gives away his secrets.” Forthwith clasped his hands and spun to face the group. “I require a volunteer from the audience. A beautiful lady—”
“Moi!” Madame Dieudonné cried, reeling to her feet.
“Marvelous,” Forthwith said with an incredulous white grin.
Madame Dieudonné dumped Meringue in Ophelia’s lap and went to Forthwith’s side.
Meringue circled twice and curled up in Ophelia’s lap. He smelled faintly of sausages and perfume.
Forthwith whipped the crimson curtain open, revealing one of the many mirrored panels that decorated the salon walls. “Ladies and gentlemen, is vanity not the bane of the gentle sex? Is it not vanity that drives even la plus belle du monde to the brink of despair to see her face wither and fade?”
Madame Dieudonné’s smile was slipping.
Forthwith continued. “Yes, in the end, perhaps vanity causes ladies to simply merge with their reflections and—poof!—disappear.” He took Madame Dieudonné’s hand. “My dear lady, step this way.” He whispered a few words in her ear, and she nodded.
Forthwith attempted to hand Madame Dieudonné up onto the chair, but she was not able to lift her foot so high. Forthwith hoisted her by the waist. She kicked arthritically and Forthwith staggered, but at last she was standing upon the chair and facing the mirror.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” Forthwith said, “I shall cause this lady . . . to vanish.”
“He seems ever so adept at this,” Ivy whispered loudly to her father.
Forthwith whipped the curtains closed. He held up his hands like an orchestra conductor.
The audience held its breath.
Forthwith whisked the curtains open. The mirror shone. No Madame Dieudonné. “Ah, where has she gone? To join, perhaps, the fairyland of self-deception and enchantment that exists inside the mirror? Let us ask her when she returns.” He closed the curtains again, flourished his hands, and cried, “She returns!” He whipped open the curtains.