by Maia Chance
“Who is there?” came Henrietta’s muffled voice from inside.
“Ophelia.”
“Do something, Ophelia. This is all your fault! If it weren’t for you and your silly scheme—”
“Shhh.” Ophelia glanced up and down the corridor. No one was within earshot. Probably. “My scheme?” she whispered through the keyhole.
“You get people into jams with your odd, childish, theatrical taste for costumes and deceptions—”
“That isn’t true.” Was it? Ophelia considered herself to be a wholly practical lady. Yes, from time to time she resorted to drastic measures, but only in a pinch and when much was at stake. Henrietta was making her sound . . . frivolous.
“All I desire is to return to Paris.” A glugging sound was followed by Henrietta smacking her lips.
“Are you drinking?”
“Nothing else to do in here. Bottles and bottles of wine on the sideboard. Why did I ever leave Paris? That Larsen doesn’t care a whit for me. He fancies he longs for a lady, but what he truly desires is a lumberjack in a hoop skirt.”
“I’m going to figure out who did this,” Ophelia said. “Have you any notion?”
“Miss Banks. Little bitch.”
“But you said you came upon the body together.”
“We did.” Another bottle-glug noise. “We were going along the corridor together when we heard the shot. We entered the study together. Madame Dieudonné was dead. I picked up the gun.”
“Then why did you say it was Miss Banks?”
“Because . . . I wish it was her. She requires being taken down a few pegs.” There was a thump, as though Henrietta had collapsed against the other side of the door.
“Henrietta? Henrietta, I’ll get you out of this scrape. I promise.”
“Ha! Think quite a lot of your lady detective abilities, don’t you?”
Not precisely. But Ophelia did have a solid history of iron-gritted determination. “I must go now,” she whispered, hearing approaching footsteps.
“If only I could flee,” Henrietta said, “simply flirt my way out of those policemen’s clutches and hop aboard the next train. Only, this godforsaken place doesn’t have a train station for fifty miles around.”
It was true; Ophelia recalled all too well the long stagecoach ride from the Limoges train station. Something shifted at the back of her mind. What was it? Something about train stations and railroads and being trapped—
A man cleared his throat just next to Ophelia. She started and, since she was still crouched, she tumbled backwards. Her crinoline and petticoats poofed. “Oh. Professor Penrose.” She scrambled to her feet.
“Miss Flax,” he said, giving her a hand. He held Meringue awkwardly, like one would hold a stack of books. “Your dog.”
“My dog?”
“Who’s that?” came Henrietta’s muffled voice. “Professor Penrose? Professor! You must get me out of here.”
“Good night, Henrietta,” Ophelia said.
“Drat, the bottle’s empty,” Henrietta said.
Penrose led Ophelia across the corridor, into the salon. “No one wishes to look after the dog,” he said. “I have heard everything from vague claims that he is a nuisance to intricately detailed accusations regarding his mode of, ah, tending to his bodily requirements. Funny things have been found on the Aubusson carpets.” Penrose released Meringue onto the floor. Meringue scampered to a sofa and lifted his leg.
“No!” Ophelia cried, swooping him up. She turned to Penrose. “I must take him outside.”
“Miss Flax.” Penrose’s voice was very low, and his eyes glittered behind his spectacles. “May I vehemently suggest that you do not attempt to free Henrietta—”
“What? How could you even suggest that? She is innocent.”
“Is she?”
“Yes.”
“She was caught with a gun in her hand, standing over a dead body. Might I propose that you do not know her as well as you believe you do?”
“Maybe I don’t know you as well as I believed I did, Professor.”
His jaw tightened. “Leave this place, Miss Flax, before it is too late. Poking about in this business at this juncture would be foolhardy. This isn’t a stage play.”
Why was everyone suggesting that Ophelia was some sort of drama-mad dingbat?
Penrose went on, “Whoever is behind these two murders will stop at nothing to protect themselves. They might attempt to frame you for the crimes—”
“You mean, Henrietta might attempt to frame me,” Ophelia said in a flat voice.
“Yes. She is desperate.”
“She’s only drunk. And disappointed that she didn’t captivate Mr. Larsen.”
“If the murderer is not Henrietta, but someone else who still walks free, you could be in mortal danger. If it is a matter of means, I will purchase your railway ticket to Paris—I’ll purchase your steamship passage back to the United States, if you will allow me to. It is only a matter of time before the police learn that you and Forthwith are impostors, too. All they need to do is telegraph whoever it was you said you were staying with in Paris—”
“Artemis Stunt.” Crumbs. Please oh please, Artemis, be gone at one of your country house parties.
“The police will likely telegraph her tomorrow. Go, tonight, before it is too late.”
Why was he so confounded eager to get rid of her, anyway? Ophelia set her chin. “No. No handouts, for starters, and second of all, I couldn’t leave even if I wished.”
“Oh?”
“The ring. Remember?”
“You wouldn’t go through with the wedding simply on account of not being able to produce the ring? Surely Griffe would understand.”
Oh, Penrose would be surprised. “I don’t mean to go ahead with the wedding, but I certainly mean to figure out who stole the ring—and murdered two people—and that means staying put here at the château.” Ophelia really shouldn’t be talking about such things with another lady’s fellow, and it was unconscionable speaking about Griffe like this in his own house. But it was time to tell Penrose the whole truth. “I never meant to marry Griffe. I only wished to, well, to nettle you.”
“Nettle me?” Penrose knit his eyebrows.
“Yes. It was foolish, and childish, and awfully unfair to Griffe. So now I must simply buckle down, find the ring, collar the murderer, and be on my way.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Henrietta gave me an idea of where to start. Have you any notion where I might find a railroad map of France?”
“Then you do mean to leave.”
“Not at all.”
“I believe there is a booklet of French railway timetables that must have a map in it in the library. I saw it days ago.”
“The library?” Ophelia chewed her lip. “That’s where Inspector Pierot has set up camp.”
“Not any longer.” Penrose went to the salon doors. “Yes, I hear them coming to fetch Henrietta.”
Ophelia and Penrose closed the salon doors most of the way and peered through the crack. Inspector Pierot and two gendarmes arrived, with Griffe and Larsen just behind. Griffe produced a ring of keys, and Inspector Pierot unlocked the dining room doors.
Henrietta must’ve been sitting and leaning on the doors, for when the doors were opened, she rolled out onto the carpet with an empty wine bottle in one hand.
“Disgraceful,” Larsen muttered.
“It’s your fault, you dried-up, stringy old codger,” Henrietta said, not bothering to get up off her back. “Your fault! Do you see my face? My feet?” She lifted a leg and swiveled it.
Larsen and Griffe exchanged that special chummy gentlemen’s look that said Hysteria—SO sad.
Inspector Pierot shook his head. “Madame, please rise. And do put your ankles and petticoats aw
ay.”
“People pay big money to see my ankles and petticoats!” Henrietta shouted.
“Woman,” Griffe said, “—for I will not address you as madame or mademoiselle, not only because we know not what you truly are or from whence you came, but because you are a wretched and deceitful creature and it is fitting that you grovel upon the floor, since you are indeed lower than the worm that crawls—”
“Oh, get to the point,” Henrietta snapped. Now both her feet were in the air, and she studied them as though pondering a purchase at the shoemaker’s.
Griffe flushed. “Very well. I shall. Even if the police, for some deluded reason, set you loose, do not cross my threshold again.”
“She will not be set loose,” Inspector Pierot said.
The gendarmes bent to grab Henrietta’s arms. She kicked each of them in a tender portion of their anatomy. They both doubled over with an oof. Penrose, hidden beside Ophelia, winced. The gendarmes recovered and dragged Henrietta to her feet. They led her, cursing and thrashing, away. Inspector Pierot, Griffe, and Larsen followed.
“Will you show me where to find that railroad timetable?” Ophelia whispered to Penrose. She ignored the sick hollow feeling in her stomach.
“Meet me in the library in a few minutes.”
He didn’t need to explain to her that they shouldn’t be seen sneaking around the château together.
19
Ophelia waited a few minutes, and then collected Meringue from his project of de-tasselling a cushion. She took him out into the side court to do his business. He didn’t. Not hopeful for the château’s parquet. The moon was almost full, a blameless white disk. The wind rushed through tree branches. Far in the distance, something howled, long and lonesome. Meringue growled, hackles rising. Ophelia felt too, too cold.
She went back inside to the library. Penrose arrived moments later, shut the doors, and pulled a booklet from a shelf. “The French railway timetables,” he said softly.
“Thank you.” Ophelia plopped Meringue on the floor and took the booklet. “Good night.”
“Good night? You don’t intend to tell me about your marvelous deduction?”
“Not after you told me to go to America immediately and never come back.”
He scratched his eyebrow. “That is not precisely—”
“It’s like this.” Ophelia flipped through the booklet and found a map of the entire country of France with, it looked like, every railroad line. “I happened to see a peculiar newspaper article about an empty train running back and forth between—what was it?”—she squinted at the map—“yes, between Avignon and Lyon.”
“And?”
“Just give me a moment.” Ophelia studied the map. Holy Moses. “Look at this, Professor. See, the stagecoach started out in Marseille, bound for Bordeaux. Now, Mr. Knight, Madame Dieudonné, and Abel Christy were all on board, and they all wished to get to Paris. But see? Bordeaux is far, far off the path between Marseille and Paris—Paris is almost a straight shot north from Marseille, but Bordeaux is way over here on the west coast. But we are just between Marseille and Bordeaux, here in the Périgord.”
“Wait a moment. If Knight, Madame Dieudonné, and Master Christy all wished to go to Paris, why in heaven would they go via Bordeaux? And in a stagecoach, no less?”
“It’s because of that train in the newspaper article. See, they couldn’t travel from Marseille to Paris by train because one critical leg of the journey, between Avignon and Lyon, was all sold out for many days. So instead of waiting around, they decided to travel by stagecoach to Bordeaux. Mr. Knight and Abel were to take a ship from Bordeaux to England—Abel told me as much—and Madame Dieudonné planned to take a different railway route to Paris, once she arrived in Bordeaux.”
“And they collected Tolbert only miles from here, in Sarlat.”
“Yes. He always meant to go to Bordeaux, in order to pick up the parcel waiting for him.”
“It strikes me as odd that Knight and Madame Dieudonné were not willing to wait in Marseille until the railway route opened up again. After all, even factoring in a week’s wait in Marseille, the stagecoach journey would take just as much, if not more time, and stagecoach travel is far more strenuous than train travel.”
“Madame Dieudonné seems to have been in a lather to leave the South of France. Something about casino creditors.”
“Ah.”
“And Mr. Knight was in a hurry to collect a reward from the Christy’s family solicitor in London, for the safe delivery of Abel.”
“That sounds rather odd.”
“Because he was a vicar?”
“Well, yes. Oughtn’t he have escorted Master Christy to London out of a sense of duty or charity?”
“Not if he was hard up. Mr. Knight wasn’t exactly the smug saint he pretended to be. He had wine stains on his shirt when he died, and Madame Dieudonné and Abel both say he was unpleasant and sneaky. And that scar on his neck—someone tried to murder him once, I’d bet.”
Ophelia studied the railroad map again. The Avignon to Lyon line stretched north–south through the belly of France. “Now here’s what hit me when Henrietta said she was trapped here in the Périgord, on account of the lack of close-by railroad stations. I’d already suspected that the murderer planned things out in advance by bribing the stagecoach driver, Gerard, to make the coach break down in front of the château gates. Well, what if the planning stretched back even further? What if the murderer bought out all the train tickets on that route, knowing that it would force Mr. Knight and Madame Dieudonné to travel by stagecoach to the Périgord? What if Mr. Knight and Madame Dieudonné were lured here, lured all the way from Marseille?”
“A trap.”
Ophelia’s neck prickled. “It’s calculated. Devious.”
“If your theory is correct.”
“It must be. Otherwise, what could we possibly make of the absolute coincidence of both murder victims—supposedly strangers to everyone in the château—just showing up here, unannounced and by surprise?”
Penrose said nothing, but his tense jaw told Ophelia that he was taking her theory seriously.
Ophelia went on, “Whoever bought out the tickets on that train route, well, that would be mighty costly. Which means the murderer is very, very rich.”
Griffe, Bernadette, Larsen, and Banks were all very, very rich, so this didn’t narrow down the suspects much.
“How could we learn who bought out the train route between Avignon and Lyon?” Ophelia asked.
“I suppose the railway ticket office in one of those two cities would have the answer.”
“Could we—could you—send them both a telegram?” Ophelia’s ears went hot. “I could pay you back some other time—I promise I would.”
“I’ll go to the telegraph office in the morning.” Penrose studied her. “And yes, pay me back when you are able.”
“I will.” Some folks might’ve thought it petty, a rich lord asking an unemployed actress to pay back such a small sum. But Ophelia breathed a sigh of relief. It was awful, going around begging favors all the time on account of being flat broke. The professor was allowing her to keep her dignity, and she liked him for it.
Not, of course, that Ophelia had any prospects for money on the horizon. With Henrietta in jail, there wasn’t much hope of ever receiving the sum Henrietta had promised her in exchange for sticking out the engagement for two extra weeks. Although, of course, Ophelia felt mean to even think of that.
“Speaking of telegrams,” Penrose said, “I nearly forgot what I wished to tell you earlier. I’ve heard from Sir Percival Christy’s solicitor in London—a courier boy brought a telegram to the château earlier this evening. Mr. Montgomery is most distressed to learn that Mr. Knight is dead and that Sir Christy’s son is stranded in the Périgord.”
“His son?”
“That is what he s
aid.”
That was funny. Abel had led Ophelia to believe that Sir Christy was only his protector and that he was descended from Nubian blue bloods.
“At any rate, because Montgomery knows me by reputation—he is on retainer for a certain branch of my family tree—he has requested that I escort Master Christy to England as soon as I am able. Although now, with the police launching a murder investigation, heaven knows when that will be.”
“You must have a good reputation, Professor.”
“I make an attempt.” He smiled.
“I must go now.” Ophelia felt suddenly shy. “Meringue. Meringue?” Ophelia made a kissy noise that she knew made poodles come running. No Meringue. She heard snuffling noises over by the windows and went over. Meringue was gobbling something off the floor behind the drapes. Ophelia bent to see. Cake crumbs.
Someone had been eating cake—her wedding cake, by the looks of it—behind the drapes. Someone had heard everything she and Penrose had said.
Ophelia picked up Meringue, who was smacking his fuzzy chops. Good thing the eavesdropper had only been Abel. She’d have a word with him first thing in the morning regarding keeping his trap shut.
No fire, up in Ophelia’s chamber. The parakeet was puffed up on its perch, eyes shut. Ophelia got the fire going, and in its orange glow she noticed an envelope on her pillow.
She picked it up.
Mademoiselle Stonewall
was all the envelope said.
Griffe was at it again. She opened the envelope.
Ma Chérie,
I will be occupied all day tomorrow, directing the woodcutters and tending to other business. Pray meet me in the orangerie before breakfast. I would most enjoy choosing together the flowers with which to decorate our wedding altar. I will await your presence at eight o’clock. Do not be late.
Griffe
The orangerie? How spooky, although not as spooky as the prospect of more time alone with Griffe. But the trouble was, Ophelia couldn’t stir the pot. She couldn’t risk being banished from the château now, because if that happened, she wouldn’t be able to sleuth any longer.