by Maia Chance
Prue’s hand quivered as she passed it over.
“The cork.”
She pried the cork off the bottle.
Winkler dropped the lump into the acid. It gleamed with an unmistakable luster as it sank and hit the bottom with a clink.
“Mein Gott,” he murmured through his mustaches. “It is real gold.”
* * *
Gabriel was quiet as the rest of the party in the library—except the footman and the tall, serene lady’s maid—erupted into a dither. Unlike Winkler, his hypothesis had been that the paint from the cottage ceiling beam would prove to contain gold.
With the help of one of the footmen and the gardener boy, Gabriel and Winkler had hauled the contents of the cottage to the castle and placed them in the library alcove. Seven little wooden beds, seven chairs, and a table, all delicate with decay, were lined up next to crates of spoons and pewter vessels, just behind a velvet curtain.
After luncheon, he and Winkler had cleaned the beam to reveal a carved design of seven little bearded men in pointed hats, all in a row, with shovels and pickaxes on their shoulders. Gabriel had struggled to conceal his excitement. Winkler had laughed.
But how would Winkler explain the presence of real gold in what he’d deemed an elaborate peasant hoax?
Winkler, however, looked as bemused as ever as he glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. The old beast was already getting peckish for tea.
* * *
“Test the soil!” Mrs. Coop bounced on her crinoline like a schoolgirl. “Oh, professor, I’ll wager that it’s gold, too.”
Ophelia frowned. Why was Mrs. Coop so keen on gold? After all, she was a millionaire’s bride.
“Perhaps,” Winkler said. “I shall begin by refining a sample of the soil in question with the mortar, to ensure an evenly sized particulate.”
After he ground a measure of the soil into powder, he mixed it in a glass bowl with water, producing something like mud.
“Now for the sodium cyanide,” he said. He held up a vial of clear liquid.
“Cyanide!” Princess Verushka laid a hand over her heart.
“And I thought nitric acid was alarming,” Mr. Hunt said. He lit a cigarette.
“This,” Winkler said, grinning down at Prue, “is one thing I shall not allow your pretty hands to touch. This is deadly poison—do you understand? This solution of dissolved sodium cyanide crystals is far more toxic even than prussic acid, your common vermin killer. A few drops on the tongue would make you fall down dead.”
“Yes, sir,” Prue whispered.
Winkler proceeded to pour the cyanide solution into the sludge of soil and water, and mix it with a glass stirring stick.
“Cyanide has,” he said, “an affinity for gold—much like dwarves, ha ha. Stirring allows sufficient air into the mixture. Without air, the experiment would not work.”
Ophelia refrained from rolling her eyes. The professor’s hot air was probably responsible for putting countless college boys to sleep.
“Now,” Winkler went on, “I filter the mixture using that screen—fräulein?”
Prue handed him a small screen of fine metal mesh.
Winkler poured the sludge onto the screen, over a second bowl. A liquid dripped through, leaving the sludge on the screen. He set it aside.
“The final step is zinc powder. That small bottle there.”
Prue passed him a corked amber bottle.
“Not poisonous, I hope,” Mr. Hunt said in a droll tone.
Winkler tapped white powder into the bowl of liquid. “Quite innocuous. Now—observe.”
Everyone crowded close. Tiny flecks of gold winked in the whitish slurry of zinc.
“Is that—?” Mr. Coop said.
“Gold,” Winkler said. “The soil about the small house is filled with gold.”
* * *
In the subsequent commotion, Ophelia saw Prue slink out of the library.
“Ma’am,” Ophelia whispered, bending close to Mrs. Coop’s ear, “you look pale—shall I bring you a cup of tea?”
“Do I?” Mrs. Coop said distractedly. “No, no, we’ll have tea in only an hour.”
“You must think of your health.”
“Very well, Flax, some cool water, then.” Mrs. Coop dove back into excited conversation with the others.
Ophelia slipped away.
* * *
She caught up to Prue in the servants’ stair.
“What were you doing above stairs?” Ophelia said. “Mrs. Coop will be furious, once she stops to think of it.”
Their footsteps echoed off the stone walls.
“Katrina cut her finger on a broken wineglass,” Prue said, marching down the steps. “Had to fill in for her.”
Ophelia threw her a sharp glance. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Prue sniffled.
“Wait.” Ophelia touched her arm.
Prue stopped on the stairs.
“Why have you been crying?”
“Haven’t.” Prue smeared her sleeve across her nose.
“Prue.”
“It was awful.”
Ophelia wrapped her arms around Prue and lowered them both to a seat on the cold steps. Prue cried like a baby against Ophelia’s arm. Ophelia waited until the weeping subsided.
“Prue, tell me what happened. Have you been hurt?”
Prue smudged her wet cheeks and shook her head. “I wish we was back in New York.”
“It won’t be too much longer, now.”
“These people are rats!”
“Shh.” Ophelia pricked her ears. She thought she’d heard a sound, further up the stairwell. She waited a few seconds. Nothing. She lowered her voice. “We oughtn’t speak ill of our employers, because if they hand us our walking papers, we’ll be in a worse fix than ever. Tell me, what happened to make you so upset?”
“It’s all because of Hansel.”
“Hansel?” Ophelia frowned, thinking of the smiling-eyed youth who worked in the castle gardens. “He seems pleasant enough.”
“Oh, he is pleasant.” Prue perked up. “Pleasant and helpful and ever so kind to me.”
“Lads of nineteen have been known to be kind to pretty girls.”
“He’s nice.”
“Go on.”
“Well, after luncheon today the dirty china, silver, and crystal came into the kitchen like a landslide. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off just trying to keep up—”
The castle was short on servants, since many had left when Count Grunewald had sold the place, and the Coops had yet to hire replacements. Everyone was run off their feet with extra work.
“—and I ran smack into Karl, and he was carrying a half-eaten chocolate cake the size of Pennsylvania, and it went all over me.”
“And you cried?”
“Not then,” Prue said. “But I almost did, because I looked like I’d been wallowing in a pigpen, and Hansel always comes in after meals to take away the scraps—for his chickens, and they aren’t so different than pigs, are they, so he would know—and I couldn’t bear for him to see me looking like that.”
The tale had, so far, all the hallmarks of one of Prue’s debacles. She’d been fired from Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties, for instance, after she’d clumsily revealed that Mr. DeLuxe was married—to the pretty lady he’d been pursuing around the ship.
“I thought,” Prue said, “I’d sneak away and change—I knew Cook would never allow it if I asked her. Only thing was, I couldn’t use the servants’ stair because I couldn’t risk anyone going and tattling to Cook. So I took the other stairs.”
“The family stairs?” Prue had not yet caught the spirit of scullery maid decorum.
Prue nodded. “Well, at the top of the stairs, that big corridor with them plushy carpets was empty. So I hurrie
d along, planning to take the grand staircase to the upper chambers.” Her voice thickened again. “I’d near made it when someone reached out and grabbed my arm.”
Ophelia listened with mounting dread.
“I opened my mouth to scream, see, but he smacked his big, hot hand over my mouth and pulled me into his study.”
“Who did?”
“Mr. Coop.”
“Mercy.”
“He was all big and red-faced, with his hair puffed around his head like a lion—”
“He’s pickled today.”
“Smelled like a distillery. I said, ‘Awful sorry, mister.’ He asked me what I was doing above stairs. Said I was just taking a shortcut.”
Ophelia’s hands had balled into fists.
“I tried to get away,” Prue said. “He grabbed my shoulder, rough as can be, and said ‘Not so fast.’”
“He touched you?”
“He did! So I said, ‘I reckon I’ll be obliged to scream soon, mister.’ Well, he laughed at that—mean, you know, not funny laughing—and showed his yellow horse teeth. I even saw his two gold molars, way back. Then he shoved his big mug right up into mine and said, ‘You reckon so, do you? Well, I reckon I’ll be obliged to expose every one of you lying harpies in this castle for what you really is.’”
Ophelia tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. “He knows we’re actresses?”
“That’s what I thought, but then he said—I remember it clear as day, because it sounded so peculiar—‘chippies posing as ladies, and daughters pretending they ain’t daughters at all.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t know. But I said, ‘I ain’t pretending that I ain’t a daughter!’ I was thinking of Ma, see, and how I wish for the world she hadn’t left me. I said, ‘I’m perfectly willing to admit to being a daughter. Maybe it’s the parents who are pretending they ain’t got children.’”
“And?”
“He scratched his head, said something like, ‘Then you know?’ Well, I hadn’t the foggiest what he was going on about, but I was itching to make a getaway, so I said, ‘Sure I know. And if you don’t leave me alone, Mr, Coop, I’ll tell everyone.’ Well, that did it. He let go my arm. I made a run for it, and I didn’t stop till I reached our bedchamber.”
There was a clattering above them in the stairwell; someone was coming down. Ophelia and Prue darted to their feet and continued on their way to the kitchens.
5
The ground floor of Schloss Grunewald was a honeycomb of low, vaulted stone chambers that housed laundries, pantries, sculleries, storerooms, and even a cider-pressing room. The kitchen had arching stone supports hung with onions and herbs, a yawning fireplace on either end, and scrubbed plank tables heaped with vegetables, bowls, and pots. The kitchen was also equipped with two newfangled stoves, upon which soups and sauces now bubbled. Cook had already begun dinner.
Three servants sat at one of the tables. Freda, a tiny, bug-eyed housemaid, was munching one of Cook’s cinnamon pastries called schnecken, her eyes glued to a novel. Katrina, a big-boned parlor maid with the listless disposition of a Holstein cow, sipped tea. Her finger was bandaged. She was speaking with the gardener, Hansel. He was a golden youth with curls and shining brown eyes, like Little Boy Blue in Ophelia’s girlhood copy of Mother Goose.
As Ophelia and Prue neared the table, Prue fixed her eyes on the floor, and her cheeks went pink. When Hansel glanced up to see Prue, his own sun-browned cheeks reddened.
Ah, young love. Not that Ophelia had ever experienced such a malady. She figured she was too practical to be stricken.
The withered, deaf old lady called Matilda hunkered on a stool in the chimney corner, peeling apples with a paring knife at an inchworm’s pace.
She glanced up. Her raisin eyes glared.
Ophelia smiled, even though there was no point. Matilda was bent on hating Prue and Ophelia, even though they’d never spoken to her—Matilda communicated by writing in German with the slate and bit of chalk that were always at her side. She was said to be skilled in the arts of herbal medicine, but Ophelia had seen no evidence of this except a dirty little closet cluttered with dried plants, next to one of the pantries.
“High time you returned,” Cook said. She cast Prue a sidelong glance while pulling a tray of cakes from the oven. “I thought Madam wanted a bowl of washing powder, not a cozy chat.”
Cook—Frau Holder—was a plump and homely lady with a mobcap and jowls. She, like all of the castle servants, spoke perfect English because Count Grunewald had been married to a British lady. The housekeeper had quit after the count sold the castle to the Coops, and until a new one was hired, Cook was acting as household overseer. She had the air of a stern fairy godmother. Maybe it was because she always smelled of nutmeg and sugar.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Prue wiped away one last tear. “I’ll just get to work on those dirty pots there.”
“A fine idea,” Cook said. She plopped the tray of cakes on a board to cool. “And you, Miss Flax? I am not accustomed to seeing you down here in the afternoon. There you are, Wilhelm.”
Wilhelm, the second footman, a pleasant Humpty-Dumptyish fellow of perhaps thirty years, entered the kitchen.
He must’ve been the one on the servants’ stair behind them.
“Fetching water for Madam,” Ophelia mumbled to Cook. But Cook had already forgotten her.
She had to pass Matilda’s chimney corner on her way back to the servants’ stair. The old lady paused once more in her apple paring to fix her hot eyes on Ophelia.
She fancied she felt Matilda’s gaze boring into her back all the way up the stairs.
When Ophelia brought Mrs. Coop’s glass of water to the library, everyone had gone. Professor Winkler’s bottles and instruments, the dirty piece of wood, and the cloth-covered skeleton still lay on the table.
Ophelia returned to Mrs. Coop’s boudoir to await her next summons.
* * *
She waited for nearly an hour, glad for a moment’s peace and a chance to prop up her sore feet. She was still trooping around in the too-small stolen boots, and paying dearly for it.
But mostly, her head was spinning with the strange tale Prue had told her. She was relieved that Mr. Coop hadn’t harmed Prue—she’d heard what wealthy masters of households could get away with—but she was still unnerved by Mr. Coop’s curious pronouncements. Chippies pretending to be ladies? Daughters pretending they weren’t? What could it mean?
One thing was certain: she and Prue had to keep their heads low.
There was a rap on the door. The housemaid Freda poked her head in. She was, as always, eating. This time it was something crunchy. “Madam desires her rose cashmere wrap in the blue salon,” she said.
* * *
Ophelia heard, from behind the blue salon’s door, the hum of chatter, the soft clink of china and teaspoons.
She pushed the door open a few inches. The Coops, Amaryllis, the two professors, Princess Verushka, and Mr. Hunt were scattered about on chairs and sofas. The tea table groaned with a silver service, a large urn of fruits, and several tiered trays of cakes and biscuits. Behind them, a row of French doors opened onto a terrace. A sunlit prospect of mountains and valleys sprawled beyond the terrace, into the distance.
“. . . . and I didn’t know what to say!” Mrs. Coop said to the princess and Hunt, as Amaryllis stared dismally out a window. The princess and Hunt laughed.
“. . . ten thousand miles of railroad tracks,” Mr. Coop was saying to the professors. “Course, the Irish and Chinamen who lay them down can’t be relied on . . . forever demanding higher wages, dirty rascals. . . .”
Professor Penrose lifted his eyes and looked at Ophelia.
Her breath snagged. Why did he have to look at her like he was gazing through a windowpane?
She stepped through the door. Just as s
he did so, she saw Mr. Coop reach out, select a green apple from the urn of fruits on the tea table, and take a juicy bite. Winkler was rambling on about something even as Mr. Coop emitted an awful retching sound. The bitten apple tumbled to the carpet.
“Mein Gott!” Winkler lumbered to his feet. Penrose was already at Mr. Coop’s side.
Mr. Coop’s fingers scrabbled at his chest; Penrose was attempting to loosen Coop’s tie.
At last, Mrs. Coop and the others noticed the commotion.
“Homer!” Mrs. Coop screamed, dashing across the room. But by the time she reached her husband’s side, he’d toppled to the carpet.
“Homer!” Mrs. Coop sank by his side.
Penrose crouched down, placed two fingers at Coop’s neck. Then he touched Mrs. Coop’s shoulder. “I’m afraid he’s . . . dead.”
Ophelia stood just inside the door, as though nailed to the floor. Mrs. Coop’s cashmere wrap drooped in her hand.
Penrose looked over to her. “Miss,” he said, “please send for the police.”
“The police?” Mr. Hunt said. “Surely this is a case of apoplexy—”
“No.” Penrose looked grim. “There’s a scent of bitter almond on him. He’s been poisoned with cyanide.”
* * *
“You saw everything,” Inspector Schubert said to Ophelia before her rump had even hit the library chair.
Schubert was the inspector fetched from Baden-Baden, a spidery gent of fifty-odd years, with a spare, avid face and the habit of caressing his thin fingers together as he spoke. His black suit of clothes had a shell-like sheen from wear.
It was after one o’clock in the morning. Ophelia felt like a rag that had been sent through the wringer one too many times.
She had been waiting in the kitchen for her turn at police questioning, stealing a bit of shut-eye with her cheek on the tabletop. Prue had been summoned for her interview an hour earlier, and Ophelia hadn’t seen her since. Prue was probably curled up asleep somewhere like Rip Van Winkle.
“Yes,” Ophelia said to Schubert. “Mrs. Coop had sent for her wrap—I’m her maid, see—and it was only moments after I’d arrived in the salon that Mr. Coop”—she swallowed—“died.”