Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna

by Maia Chance

  Gabriel tossed a coin, and the boy caught it. “Prepare a horse for me. I must ride to town.”

  “Oui, monsieur.” The boy’s eyes slanted to and from Gabriel’s bruised cheekbone, and then he went to fetch a horse.

  As the boy finished with the saddle, Gabriel said, “Tell me, lad, where does the château cook go on her days off?”

  “Marielle? To her sister’s house in the village.”

  “Who is her sister?”

  “Marguerite, the midwife—the blacksmith’s wife.”

  “The woman who claims to have sighted the beast two nights ago whilst nursing her child?”

  “Yes.”

  That the cook’s sister was also the blacksmith’s wife was nothing strange. Such interlacing was common in small villages. Still, unease rolled in Gabriel’s belly. He didn’t quite know why. “Do you suppose Marielle will be at her sister’s home today?”

  “Well, that is uncertain. The whole village is preparing for a”—the stable boy ducked his head, rubbing his nose with a knuckle—“for a celebration. The women are all making pinecone garlands at Jeanne’s house today.”

  “For the upcoming wedding?”

  “What? No! Oh—do you mean the count’s wedding?”

  “Of course.” Why was the lad so unnerved? “Thank you.” Gabriel mounted the horse and set off for Sarlat.

  * * *

  “There you are, Miss Stonewall,” Ivy said when Ophelia seated herself at the breakfast table. Only Ivy and Forthwith were there, sitting side by side. “You must miss your friend Mrs. Brighton awfully—is that why you appear so pale? So sad she was forced to spend the night in jail—but then, I suppose she must get used to it.” Ivy buttered a roll.

  “Good morning,” Ophelia said. Meringue bounded in from somewhere and hopped onto her lap. “Your father has taken ill, the count tells me.”

  “Yes.” Ivy fluttered her eyelids. “But he takes turns now and then—no one really knows why. I’m certain he’ll be well by tomorrow.

  Ophelia looked around at the untouched place settings. “Where is everyone?”

  “Larsen’s already out stalking his beast,” Forthwith said, “and God knows where everyone else has gone.”

  “I fancy everyone’s afraid of being murdered,” Ivy said, “so they’re hiding. Of course, I believe one of the servants did it. The locals here are frightfully devious.”

  Forthwith checked the clock on the mantel. “I must be going, myself. The count has given me the use of his coachman and carriage to drive into Sarlat this morning.”

  “Oh? Whatever for?” Ivy asked.

  Forthwith paused, and then flashed a smile. “Why, to call upon the wretched Mrs. Brighton in jail.”

  He was up to something. Ophelia was sure of it.

  “That deceitful creature?” Ivy said. “Why would you visit her?”

  “Mrs. Brighton is indeed a sorry example of womankind,” Forthwith said, “but I feel it is my duty as her countryman to see to it that she is being treated in a humane fashion by the police.”

  Ophelia said, “I’ll go with you.” She would figure out what Forthwith was doing in Sarlat if it was the last thing she did.

  “Sister, that will not be necessary. In fact—”

  “You cannot talk me out of it.”

  Forthwith sighed. “Oh, very well. But I wish to leave in ten minutes. The carriage is supposed to be waiting in the front drive then.”

  Ophelia cut open a boiled egg and spooned it into Meringue’s mouth.

  “How revolting,” Ivy said with a shudder. “Mr. Stonewall, do you always allow your sister to display such barbaric manners?”

  “I would thrash her soundly if we were back in Ohio.”

  “You’d wind up with a black eye, too,” Ophelia said.

  Ivy looked shocked.

  “I can’t very well starve the poor animal,” Ophelia said. Meringue licked egg yolk from his muttonchops.

  “Why don’t you take him to the hunting dogs’ kennels for some kibble?” Forthwith asked.

  Ophelia shook her head. “And risk him being poisoned?”

  “There is quite a lot of poison floating about this place, isn’t there?” Ivy said. “I first thought that, of course, when Mr. Knight was discovered with all those bottles of medicine lying about in the orangerie, and then I thought it again when Madame Genepy was taking heart tablets when I visited her yesterday.”

  “Was she?” Ophelia asked.

  “Oh, yes. And then I thought of poison again when I saw Bernadette putting some little tablets in bits of cheese, and then—”

  “Wait,” Ophelia said. “What was that about Bernadette putting tablets in cheese? When?”

  Ivy scrunched her forehead, finger to her cheek. For a young lady who purportedly read Latin and Greek, she certainly excelled at looking like a numbskull. “I suppose it was the morning before we all went out hunting together. The day before yesterday. I wished to ask her about borrowing a pair of gloves for the hunt, and I found her in the pantry, poking tablets into bits of cheese and placing them in a basket. I thought nothing of it, although she did seem startled to see me. She gave the basket to a manservant and led me upstairs.”

  “That was the day the hunting dogs were poisoned,” Ophelia said. Meringue gobbled more egg off the spoon.

  “Was it?” Ivy took a pixie’s bite of roll and chewed. “I think I will be ill if I must continue to watch you feeding that horrid poodle. Mr. Stonewall, can’t you do something? Make it all just—disappear?”

  Forthwith’s jaw was tight. But he could not resist showing off—he never could. “Very well, Miss Banks. I will consent to making my sister’s egg and spoon disappear but not, alas, the poodle, for fear of a black eye.” He whipped out a handkerchief from his pocket. Something thunked on the floor beside him.

  Ivy looked down. She gasped.

  Ophelia looked under the table. A brown medicine bottle, just like the one she’d seen in Knight’s pocket, lay on the carpet.

  “Are those . . . heart tablets?” Ivy said, touching her throat. “Is that the bottle that was found in poor Mr. Knight’s pocket, Mr. Stonewall?”

  “The police kept that bottle,” Ophelia said.

  “It isn’t mine,” Forthwith said.

  “But it fell from your pocket,” Ophelia said.

  Forthwith bolted to his feet, knocking his chair to the floor. “Well, it isn’t mine!” He stormed away without righting the chair.

  “Well then,” Ivy said, and took a prim sip of coffee.

  Ophelia didn’t know what to say to Ivy. But she did know that she must ride with Forthwith to Sarlat and find out what he had up his sleeve. She got up. “Would you mind Meringue for a few hours?” she asked, plopping the dog on Ivy’s lap.

  Ivy stiffened. “Oh. I suppose. Animals simply adore me. I’ve got a King Charles spaniel at home. Little Roddy.”

  Meringue growled.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Ophelia righted Forthwith’s chair and went to fetch her cloak and bonnet.

  21

  The carriage ride to town was awkward. Forthwith kept tossing Ophelia dark looks, and she tried to keep up the sprightly routine.

  Why hadn’t she thought of Forthwith as a suspect before? Forthwith had a motive for both murders: to keep his true identity concealed. If Knight or Madame Dieudonné had discovered that he was really a conjurer of the stage, not a soap heir from Ohio, well, he might’ve been inclined to permanently shut them up.

  Of course, Forthwith didn’t have a penny to his name—supposedly. And if Ophelia’s theory about the bought-out train route as a way to lure the murder victims to Château Vézère was correct, then Forthwith couldn’t have afforded it, for starters.

  But . . . what if Forthwith had an accomplice? An accomplice such as Larsen? Had Larsen snored all th
rough the night the vicar had been killed while Forthwith did the dirty work? Because it sounded as though Larsen had the wherewithal to buy up every train ticket in France for a year. Forthwith might have a motive for murder quite, quite different than simply trying to cover up his confidence artist tracks.

  And—oh mercy, of course—Forthwith’s parlor tricks had been integral in both murders, had they not? That first night, he’d performed the trick with the rosebush, and Knight had died clutching a rose. And then Madame Dieudonné’s disappearance through the mirror, well, what if Forthwith had orchestrated that trick only to give himself—or Larsen—a chance to kill?

  “That wasn’t my bottle of heart tablets, quite obviously,” Forthwith said out of the blue, after ten minutes of jostling along the winding road in silence.

  “Oh?” Ophelia affected disinterest.

  “Someone must have placed it in my pocket. To make me appear . . .” Forthwith scratched his upper lip. “Appear guilty.” He twitched a curtain aside and peered out the carriage window. He wore a greatcoat over a jacket, but neither was buttoned, and Ophelia saw an ivory pistol handle. “Miss Banks,” he said.

  “Miss Banks?”

  “I suppose she put that medicine bottle in my pocket. She was sitting just beside me at the breakfast table—she could have done it easily. Do you think it was only a coincidence how she talked of all the poison floating about the château, and then, lo and behold, I discovered a bottle of medicine in my pocket?”

  “You didn’t believe what she said about Bernadette putting tablets in cheese, do you?”

  “It didn’t have the ring of truth, no. Miss Banks is a liar.”

  “Have you proof?”

  “I simply know it. Call it magician’s intuition.”

  “Why would Miss Banks spread falsehoods about Bernadette? Why would she plant a medicine bottle in your pocket? She was with Henrietta when the shot that killed Madame Dieudonné was fired. Miss Banks isn’t the murderer.”

  “She planted that bottle to stir up trouble. Or to make us nervy. You said Miss Banks might know that we’re not who we claim to be, Ophelia, so perhaps she’s having a bit of fun with us. There is something not right with that young lady. She’s as pretty as picture, oh yes, but her eyes have got this weird glitter. They remind me of animal eyes—you can’t quite get through to the other side.”

  Ophelia agreed. But she was so suspicious of Forthwith, she couldn’t help wondering if he was disparaging Ivy only to muddy the waters.

  * * *

  Gabriel watered his horse at an inn and left it there. He walked through the center of Sarlat towards the telegraph office. Cafés spilled out from the crooked medieval buildings facing the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville—the city hall. Men drank coffee and read newspapers, bundled in coats, their faces turned up to the pale sunlight.

  Gabriel glanced idly at the men as he passed, but his breath caught when he recognized a face: Gerard, the stagecoach driver who had been expelled from Château Vézère for harassing the maidservant Clémence.

  Gerard sat at an outdoor café table with a lady. The lady wore lip paint and dangling earrings, and she laughed like a donkey, head tipped back.

  Gabriel approached. “Good morning,” he said in French. “Aren’t you the stagecoach driver, Gerard?”

  “That I am, that I am,” Gerard said, “and I recognize you, my lord, from the château. Course, the likes of me aren’t good enough for the count and his house. Hell, I am not even good enough for his wenches!”

  The painted lady brayed with laughter.

  Gerard was drunk, and apparently he was a generous drunk, for he invited Gabriel to join them. The painted lady looked Gabriel up and down as he sat. Having doubtless assured herself of the fine quality of his coat, she smiled.

  They made pleasantries. Despite the early hour, Gabriel accepted a glass of wine—it was a solid Bordeaux—and said, “What a fine vintage. Rather costly stuff, I daresay.”

  “Nothing but the best for sweet Emerald.” Gerard stroked the back of the lady’s neck.

  “Does the stagecoach company pay you so well?” Gabriel asked.

  Gerard’s eyes narrowed. “What a rude question for a lord. But then, you’re drinking with the likes of me, so . . .” He grinned, showing tea-colored teeth.

  “You destroyed the coach’s whippletree, didn’t you?”

  “Coach broke down all by itself.”

  “Rubbish. The whippletree rings were cut.”

  “I think I’ll just show myself to the gent’s.” Gerard stood on swaying legs. “When I get back, I trust you and your toffee nose’ll be gone.” He staggered off.

  “Well?” Emerald said, leaning her bosom over the tabletop.

  “I beg your pardon,” Gabriel murmured. He stood and followed Gerard into the gloom of the café.

  Gabriel found him relieving himself into a stone basin in the murky rear courtyard. Gabriel didn’t wait for him to finish; there was something to be said for catching a man at his most vulnerable.

  “Who paid you to disable the stagecoach?” Gabriel asked.

  Gerard fumbled with his trousers. “No one.”

  “Don’t make me lose my temper.”

  “A soft-pawed highborn gent like you?”

  “My paws are not particularly soft.”

  Gerard licked his lips. “I didn’t choose to get mixed up in this. I just want out of this godforsaken valley. It smells bitter—food’s bitter, wine’s bitter, the very air smells bitter. Like death.”

  “Enough of the poetics,” Gabriel said. “Tell me who paid you, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “They said they’d kill me if I told anyone about any of it.”

  Good God. Miss Flax had guessed correctly. The murderer had bribed the coachman to destroy the whippletree. “Who?”

  “I laughed at the time but now, with two murders up at the chateau, I know they mean it.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Gabriel withdrew the Webley revolver from his jacket. He didn’t mean to use force with this pitiable drunk, but a display of intimidation was, alas, required.

  Gerard stepped back, bobbing his Adam’s apple. “What I mean to say is, I never knew who it was on account of I got my directions, and the first packet of money, well, anonymously.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “I drive the Marseille-to-Bordeaux route every fortnight, and we always stop at the same inn here in Sarlat to feed and water the horses and change passengers. Well, this last time we stopped in Sarlat—”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Yes—a letter was waiting for me—a woman brought it out from the inn, said it had been left for me, she knew not by whom.”

  “A letter.”

  “Well, a letter, and a nice thick packet of money. The letter only said, brief like, to cut the whippletree rings three miles outside of Sarlat, on the Vézère River road.”

  “Just before the Château Vézère gates, then.”

  “As it turned out, yes.”

  “Did you keep the letter?”

  “I’m not a fool. Burned it.”

  “Did it say anything else?”

  “It said that if I did the job well and kept my mouth shut, there’d be more money coming. But if I slipped up . . .” Gerard’s eyes shifted about, never landing on anything. “If I mucked it up, I would be killed. They’ve been watching me these days past. I feel it. What a relief, getting out of that château, despite the free wine and vittles. Now, I reckon I’m a dead man, you knowing all this, making me tell. You’ve killed me, my lord.”

  Gabriel left Gerard standing there.

  * * *

  After visiting Henrietta, Ophelia and Forthwith paused on the police station’s steps. The police station was the same sulphur-yellow stone as every other buil
ding in town, and although it lay across the street from a pretty park, it still gave Ophelia’s chest an iron-cold feeling. It didn’t have enough windows.

  Forthwith put on his tall beaver hat. “Well, that was revolting. All that clinging, all those tears. The pimples on her nose! I feel as though I need to bathe. I wonder if they’ll really chop her head off in the public square.”

  Ophelia felt sick. Guillotines were supposedly more humane than, say, hanging, but they gave her the all-overs. “I’ve never seen Henrietta so low,” she said. Henrietta’s curls had been matted, and last night’s face paint circled her eyes.

  “Mm, quite a disaster, wasn’t she?” Forthwith checked his pocket watch. “Listen, meet me back here at the carriage in half an hour. I have some business to attend to.”

  Ophelia bet he did. “Allow me to accompany you.”

  “Heavens no, Ophelia. We aren’t friends, let alone siblings, and we needn’t keep up the ruse in private. Feeling lonely, now that your fiancé has turned into a rude lout and that Penrose fellow has found a prettier, younger lady to woo?” Forthwith trotted down the steps and off down the cobbled street.

  Ophelia waited until he’d rounded the corner before following. The street curved, sloping gently down, and funneled out into a web of busier streets. She spied a beaver hat, bobbing in the current of pedestrians, and followed it.

  The beaver hat ducked into a café. Ophelia poked her head in.

  There—the beaver hat! But wait. That wasn’t Forthwith; it was a middle-aged gent with a waxed moustache. She had followed the wrong person.

  Drat.

  “Mademoiselle?” a waiter said.

  “Pardonnez-moi,” Ophelia murmured, and went back out onto the street. She looked left and right. No Forthwith.

  Ophelia wandered along the street, searching for Forthwith. Old buildings rose up crookedly, and none of the streets went in a straight line. How she missed good old New England, with its right-angled white buildings and fresh fields.

  Aha. Here was one of the apothecary’s shops. She might ask about the château gardener peddling those belladonna plants in the orangerie.