by Maia Chance
She stopped at the gate and squinted through into the kitchen gardens. The coast was clear—the creepy fellows had vanished.
Ophelia flew between dark rows of vegetables to the mysterious barred door. And—oh, joy—the door opened easily. At the top of a dank flight of steps, she found herself out on top of the windswept battlement and just outside the tower door.
“Prue?” Ophelia made a one-knuckle rap on the door. “Prue, it’s me. Ophelia.” She joggled the door handle, just in case. Locked tight.
From inside came shuffling sounds, then Prue’s stuffy-nosed voice. “Ophelia! Get me the tunkett out of here before I—”
“Prue, try to stay calm. That is the most important thing.”
“But it’s freezing in here, and I—”
“They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Now, listen. I’ll see to it that you have everything you need—food, water. Have you any blankets?”
“Sure. If you call them scratchy burlap things blankets.”
“I’ll come and check on you as often as I can get away—but I mustn’t rouse suspicions. Is there anything in there, something small, that you might place on the windowsill, to work as a signal that you need me to come?”
“Hey! That’s what the prisoner did in that play we put on about the—”
“Never mind that. Is there anything you might use?”
“Um . . . there’s an earthen water jug.”
“That’ll do. Now, I’m going to get to the bottom of all this, Prue, and as quickly as I am able.”
“How will you do that? It’s the police we’re talking on, Ophelia.”
Ophelia jutted her chin. “I’ll allow that Inspector Schubert may have a police badge or whatever it is they’ve got in Germany. But it’s pretty obvious he’s as blind as a bat. It was Miss Amaryllis who killed Mr. Coop.”
“Amaryllis!”
Ophelia glanced over her shoulder. She crouched close to the keyhole and lowered her voice. “I saw Miss Amaryllis making sheep’s eyes at Mr. Hunt, the handsome visitor. Then Mr. Coop right humiliated Miss Amaryllis in front of Hunt—in front of everyone.”
“You reckon Miss Amaryllis croaked him for that?”
“Yes. And I mean to prove it. You can count on me, Prue, but please stay put. As long as you keep in the tower, out of the way and where you’re supposed to be, at least I’ll know you’re safe.”
“Don’t know about that—I wouldn’t be staggered if a dragon or a whole mess of ghosts showed up to the party in here.”
“Please, Prue.”
“Oh, all right.”
Ophelia returned to her bedchamber. She lay down, fully clothed, on her bed. She hadn’t cried in more years than she could count; tears were, she’d learned, nothing but a waste of tuck. But as she stared at Prue’s empty pillow and waited for the day, she did cogitate a bit on what a relief it might’ve been to shed a tear or two.
* * *
“I admit,” Professor Winkler said to Gabriel, “it is a great relief that Mrs. Coop requested we carry on with our study of the house in the wood. I worried her husband’s death might dampen her fervor.” He took a large bite of hot buttered roll.
Gabriel, across the breakfast table, sipped his coffee. “It is a relief, isn’t it?”
As long as the victuals kept coming, Winkler didn’t seem to be put off by anything. But tell him the breakfast ham had run out, and well, all operations could screech to a standstill.
Fortunately, Gasthaus Schatz, the Schilltag inn they’d gone to after the police had released them early that morning, served a delicious breakfast in its rustic, pin-neat dining room.
The only other guest, it appeared, was the hearty young British lady they’d come across in the forest yesterday morning. She was alone at a table across the dining room, rhythmically forking up and chewing her repast, at the same time scribbling away with a pencil in a notebook. She wore her dust-colored tramping costume. Her head, without its straw hat, was revealed to be crowned with a massive braided heap of gold hair.
Curious that she was alone. One rarely saw ladies traveling without companions. Although this particular lady could doubtless pass through a Marrakech bazaar at midnight unmolested. She seemed the sort who was adept at parasol whappings and walking-boot kicks.
“I should like,” Winkler said, forking up ham, “to begin by having the perimeter of the cottage cleared by the woodsman. We cannot continue to burrow about in the thicket like boars. My lumbar will not stand for it.” He chewed vigorously.
“Very well,” Gabriel said. “I do wonder why Mrs. Coop asked us to continue, though.”
One man was dead, and a young girl who was perhaps innocent was locked up in some dreadful tower. Gabriel kept thinking of the anguish in the dark eyes of the lady’s maid. Yet here he and Winkler were, discussing their scholarly work as though they hadn’t a care in the world. However, Inspector Schubert had forbidden them to leave the neighborhood, and Gabriel longed to learn more about the cottage and the skeleton. He supposed it wouldn’t do any harm.
“Why does Mrs. Coop wish us to continue?” Winkler asked. “Greed.” He spooned blueberry jam onto his fourth roll. “Eager to find more gold. They always are.”
“She does seem to have a keen interest in Snow White.”
“Americans are smitten with European fairy tales. Take that little murderess yesterday! Obsessed. Mein Gott.”
Gabriel opted not to argue that point. He might give too much away.
The pencil of the British lady across the room had slowed to a crawl. Although she did not lift her eyes from her notebook, Gabriel had the distinct impression she was hanging on to their every word.
“It is,” Winkler said, “to compensate for their own nation’s sorry lack of history.”
“Not because America is a nation of peasants,” Gabriel said, “without an aristocracy of its own?”
Winkler liked that. “A nation of peasants. Ja, ja.”
“Speaking of which,” Gabriel said, hoping he hadn’t gone too far, “I think I’ll poke about the village this morning, while you’re having the cottage site cleared. I’d like to learn if there is any local lore we aren’t aware of.”
“Best of luck. The volk will only spout the same tired twaddle.”
“Nonetheless, I think it’s worth a try.”
* * *
After Winkler had departed—in, surprisingly, a hired cart, although perhaps he was in danger of having an apoplectic fit if he attempted to haul his bulk up the crag to the castle—Gabriel took more coffee.
“Did you hear about the discovery in Schloss Grunewald’s forest?” he said to the innkeeper’s wife in German, once the British lady had gone.
The innkeeper’s wife set a fresh pitcher of cream on his table.
“Word travels quickly in a village of this size.” She smiled, resembling an elf with her bright eyes and white hair.
“What do you make of it?”
“Oh, well, now that is a question.” She wiped her wrinkled hands on her apron. “You are one of the scholars from Heidelberg.”
“I’m from England, actually, but my companion who just left is from Heidelberg University, yes.”
“I suppose you are laughing up your sleeves at we simple village folk.”
That was embarrassingly close to the truth. Not that Gabriel could tell her that his own contempt was a sham.
“I suppose,” she went on, “you wish for me to say that I believe it is Snow White’s cottage that was found out there, and those bones belonged to a magical dwarf.”
Gabriel stirred his coffee. “I don’t wish for you to say anything in particular, but I allow, I am curious what the villagers think. Has anything like this been found before? In Schilltag, I mean.”
She stared past Gabriel, out the w
indow, as though wondering how much to tell him.
Gabriel followed her gaze. At the end of the winding lane, the castle loomed up into the sky, and the clustering pine trees were black.
He found himself gripping his spoon just a bit too hard.
“Odd things have turned up, now and again,” she finally said.
“Odd things?” Things could mean anything from a relic to a snippet of gossip.
“Not houses or bones, of course. But. . . .” She wiped away a drop of cream from the lip of the pitcher. “It would be best if you went to speak to Herr Horkheimer. He knows more about all this than I do. He owns the cuckoo clock shop down the lane.”
* * *
Mrs. Coop was snoring like a steam tractor when Ophelia tiptoed into her chamber with a breakfast tray. Ophelia decided not to wake her yet. She placed the tray on a side table and began tidying up the boudoir.
She heard rumbling and hoof clopping, and darted to the window. A carriage rolled to a stop, far below in the shady castle forecourt. Two men climbed out. Inspector Schubert and Herr Benjamin. She saw a flash of Benjamin’s trailing hankie.
Back to pry a confession out of Prue, she’d warrant. A pity that Prue was liable to budge about as far as a mule stuck in maple syrup.
Ophelia poked her head back into the bedchamber. Mrs. Coop was still asleep.
Good. Because now that Ophelia had a spare moment, she also had a smidge of business to attend to.
Ophelia hastened back to her own chamber and dragged her battered theatrical case down from the wardrobe. Then she scurried through labyrinthine passages and up and down short flights of stairs, keeping to the highest regions of the castle. There were lots of empty stone chambers and funny nooks and dead ends. But she didn’t meet a soul, and she eventually found a cavernous lumber room, right under the roofline, crammed with sagging sofas, trunks, enormous empty picture frames, rolled up carpets, and dusty wardrobes.
She seesawed the case back between two antique iron-girded trunks.
There. She brushed the dust off her hands. Inspector Schubert would never, ever find it.
7
Schilltag was a quaint village of crooked half-timbered buildings with reddish tiled roofs. The village was still drowsing as Gabriel made his way to the cuckoo clock shop.
He found it, an antique storefront wedged between the telegraph office and a bakery. He eyed the display of rolls and cakes in the bakery window. Winkler would want to turn somersaults when he saw the place.
As for the cuckoo clock shop, its window was crammed with the intricately carved wooden clocks and bric-a-brac that were requisite purchases for tourists in the Schwarzwald—the Black Forest.
Inside, the shop was cool and smelled of wood shavings and, faintly, turpentine and beeswax. The air vibrated with dozens of ticking clocks that were mounted on the walls. All those pendulums swinging back and forth—shaped like pinecones, birds, leaves, and other woodland motifs—were dizzying.
There was a glass display case filled with more carved wooden things, but no one was behind it. Gabriel stepped up to the case and cleared his throat.
“Guten Morgen,” a man said, emerging from behind a green baize curtain. He was tall, stooped, and utterly bald. He wore half-moon spectacles and a leather vest over a homespun shirt. “Kann ich Sie helfen?”
“Guten Morgen,” Gabriel said. “Herr Horkheimer?”
“Ah, you are English,” the man said. “Very good. Yes, I am Horkheimer.”
Gabriel introduced himself.
“You appear surprised,” Horkheimer said, “that I speak English. Most of us in Schilltag do. The English tourists are very good for business, you see. They come up by the cartload from Baden-Baden to picnic and ramble, and to view the famous Schloss Grunewald. And they cannot leave without a curio.” He swept his hand around the shop. “Do you see anything you like?”
Gabriel hated to disappoint him. He’d purchase a trinket and then segue into questions. The display case was filled with wooden statuettes of stags, boars, bears, rabbits, and owls, all carved in the finely detailed Black Forest style.
Amid the animals there were also several tiny figurines of what appeared to be little bearded men in pointed hats. There was also a statuette of a girl cowering at the feet of a man, who held a dagger aloft.
“Is that . . . Snow White and the huntsman?”
“You know the tale, then—the Evil Queen bids the Huntsman to cut out the girl’s liver.”
“Yes, charming story. So wholesome for the little ones.”
“Those tales are not for children,” Horkheimer said.
“No?” Gabriel already knew this, but he wanted to hear what Horkheimer had to say.
“Nein. They are put into children’s storybooks because people laugh at we simple volk, and think our lore is childish.”
How Gabriel wished to heartily shake the man’s hand. Instead, he said, “I’d like to purchase this dwarf here. The one holding the pickaxe.”
He waited as Horkheimer wrapped the figure and placed it in a small box.
After he’d paid, Gabriel said, “These Snow White figures—why do you sell them?”
“The tourists come to the Black Forest to find an enchanted place. I do not wish to disillusion them.”
“But are there not special stories about Schilltag and about Schloss Grunewald in particular?”
Horkheimer paused just a hair too long. “Nein.” He took up a rag and began wiping the top of the display case.
What was he hiding?
“Danke schön,” Gabriel said, lifting his hat. He turned to leave.
As he moved towards the door, something caught his eye: a cuckoo clock in the shape, like most cuckoo clocks, of a house, with leaves and branches carved all around. Except this one also had, along its peaked roof line, a relief design of seven little bearded men in pointed hats, marching along with shovels and pickaxes on their shoulders.
It was the same design as that on the ceiling beam they’d taken from the cottage in the wood.
Gabriel’s eyes darted to the other clocks on the wall. Several repeated, with exactitude, the design.
He turned.
Horkheimer was watching him. The half lenses of his spectacles glinted.
“This clock,” Gabriel said, gesturing. “That design is . . . did you make this clock?”
“I make the clocks with the birds on top—like that one, see?”
“And this one?”
“Made by the wife of the woodsman at Schloss Grunewald,” Horkheimer said. “Frau Herz.”
Gabriel purchased the clock, and with his two boxes he returned to the inn.
* * *
Prue awoke with a yelp. Something warm and wet had splatted on her forehead. She struggled upright and pried her eyes—which were swollen tight as fists—open.
Huh. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at. A gray wall. A stone floor. And what was that in the corner? Sweet sister Sally . . . a chamber pot?
She touched the warm wetness on her forehead and studied it. White, gray, and smeary. Ugh. Bird’s ploppings. She threw a glare towards the sparrow’s nest in the rafters. One of the nasty critters looked smugly down.
Then it all came back. Mr. Coop, murdered. Those creepy tests for gold. That policeman Schubert. He’d looked like something the cat dragged in from a cemetery for social misfits.
The worst part was, Prue was hungry. She always had trouble thinking clearly when she was hungry. Whenever things got bleak, she liked to have some crisp slices of bacon or a toasted muffin or maybe a couple penny jujubes. That always put life into perspective.
A scraping sound outside interrupted her gloom-and-doom ponderings. She took off her apron, wiped her forehead clean, balled up the apron, and threw it in the corner. Then she went to the window. It was just a tall rectangle cut out from the
stone wall. No glass. They did things old-fashioned here at Schloss Grunewald. She leaned out.
Down below, maybe two stories, were the walled kitchen gardens with leafy vegetable beds and gravel walkways. The scraping sound came from a hoe, and the hoe was held by Hansel.
Crackers.
There he was, splendiferous in his white peasant shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to show sun-brown forearms, and his golden curls shone in the morning sun. Meanwhile, she was got up in an ugly brown dress with straw stuck all over, her nose and chin felt greasy, and there wasn’t a mirror or hairbrush in sight.
Well. Ma sure wouldn’t approve of her talking to a fellow when she was so messy. But Ma wasn’t here, was she?
“Psst,” Prue whispered.
Hansel went on hoeing.
She surveyed the garden. No one else was around, unless you counted the pecking hens in the yard by the wall.
“Hey!” she whispered, louder this time.
Hansel paused and straightened, wiped his forehead with his arm, and went back to hoeing.
Prue turned and scanned the dim tower room. Her eyes fell on a tray by the door, which she hadn’t noticed before. On the tray were an earthen jug and a plate of—she went and crouched beside it—pastries. Three of them. Frau Holder’s scrumptious kind with the buttery apple on the inside. And cinnamon. Still crouching, Prue gobbled one up. Heaven. She washed it down with water from the jug. Then she ate a second pastry. She’d have to sacrifice the third.
She took it to the window, aimed, and pelted it. Her lessons backstage in New York with the baseball-mad boys paid off. The pastry hit Hansel square on the back of the head.
He spun around.
Prue smiled and waved with just her fingers, like Ma had shown her.
Hansel dropped his hoe and came to the base of the tower. He shaded his eyes with his hand. “I will not tell Frau Holder you are squandering her pastries.”
“She’d never believe you, anyway. She knows them apple ones are my especial favorites.” Prue batted her lashes, something else Ma had taught her early on. “Won’t you let me out of this dump? It’s a sparrow hotel in here. I know you could go and fetch the key from Frau Holder and—”