by Maia Chance
“We may be of some benefit to each other.”
Ophelia jiggled her foot, trying to make the pins and needles stop. The ropes were far too tight. “What’re you angling at?”
“I’ll be blunt: you have, in the capacity of a castle servant, access to certain persons and places that I do not. If you agree to ask a few discreet questions of persons in the castle, I shall, in return, do my utmost to aid you in your search for Homer Coop’s murderer.”
“Just ask a few questions?”
“Very simple.”
“And then you’ll help me?”
“To the best of my ability.”
Ophelia mulled it over. Professor Penrose was clever. Very clever. And he seemed trustworthy, even if he was a stuffed-shirted, high-muck-a-mucking—
“Do you,” he asked, “accept?”
She sighed. She needed help. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Splendid.”
She felt him bump around behind her for several moments. The next thing she knew, his shoulders were no longer pressed against hers.
“What are you—?” She tried to crane her neck to see what he was doing. She heard a faint, rhythmic, sawing sound—
“You sneak!” she cried. He had somehow freed himself, and he was crouched at her feet, cutting at ropes around her ankles with a small knife.
He glanced up at her, a lopsided smile on his lips. His hazel eyes shone behind his spectacles.
“You could’ve freed us sooner,” she said.
“Is that all the thanks I get?” He cut her other ankle loose.
10
Miss Flax hurtled to her feet and rubbed her wrists. “Is that the only way you’re able to converse with a lady?” Her dark eyes flashed. “Keep her tied up?”
“Until Herz inadvertently loosened my ropes while he was tying yours,” Gabriel said, folding his penknife and slipping it into his breast pocket, “I wasn’t able to reach my knife.”
“Wasn’t able to, my eye.” She started for the door.
“Wait.” He held her shoulder. “You can’t go out there.”
“Can’t I?”
“Alone?”
“Would it blow you sideways to hear that I’m capable of looking after myself, without being herded around—and tied up—like an especially dull-witted sheep?” She shook her shoulder free.
“This isn’t a matter of wits. Herz is armed, the wood is laid with traps, and, as you noted yourself, we don’t know who he may be bringing back.”
Her mouth softened, and she knit her eyebrows.
They were lovely eyebrows, he noticed, finely sketched and tapering.
“What do you think he’s doing,” she said, “patrolling the forest like that?”
“He’s clearly working in the capacity of some sort of night watchman. Perhaps he is overzealous, or perhaps he has been instructed by whomever he is reporting back to, to detain anyone he finds on the estate at night.”
“But what’s out here, that he’s so affrighted someone might find?” Miss Flax drew her cloak close.
“It doesn’t seem to be a simple matter of keeping poachers at bay.” He paused. “You don’t think he could be reporting back to Mrs. Coop, do you?”
“She’s. . . .” Miss Flax pressed her lips together, as though wondering how much to tell.
“Mrs. Coop,” Gabriel said, “despite her recent, tragic loss, is quite taken with the idea of the cottage in the wood—perhaps she wishes to safeguard the site?”
“Maybe.”
He lifted an eyebrow.
“Oh, very well.” She sighed. “Last night—or, really, early this morning, at dawn—I happened to see two gentlemen, all in black, carrying a bundle through the courtyard garden.”
Gabriel’s heart quickened. “Go on.”
“They disappeared behind the gate.”
“Did you recognize them?”
“No.”
“And the bundle—what did it look like?”
“Long. Long and narrow.”
“The ceiling beam—you do know it’s gone missing, along with all the relics from the cottage?”
“Yes. The whole castle’s humming with the news.”
“So it’s possible,” Gabriel said, “that Herz is not reporting to Mrs. Coop, but to whomever those mysterious gentlemen were.”
“Or maybe Herz and those two gentlemen are in the employ of the same person.”
“Perhaps.”
Miss Flax narrowed her eyes. “My notion’s just as much of a dinger as yours.”
Gabriel had been under the obviously mistaken impression that Miss Flax was a quiet, rather regal young lady. Yet she was, evidently, loquacious, a bit hotheaded, and the proud owner of a steely will.
And what had possessed him to say that he’d do his utmost to help her find Coop’s killer? Gabriel had always made a point of steering well clear of human entanglements. They only got in the way of his work.
But that was just it: he’d agreed to help her, not for her sake, but for the sake of those missing relics and the mystery of their origins. She could easily inquire as to the whereabouts of the tapestry Frau Herz had mentioned.
His fingertips tingled in anticipation of touching that dwarf’s skeleton again, of caressing the hand-carved shapes in the ceiling beam.
He’d just have to humor Miss Flax a short while longer.
“Your notion was, indeed, a dinger,” he said. “Shall we venture forth?”
* * *
Hansel and Prue sneaked away from the castle grounds and trooped up into the mountains. Hansel lugged a knapsack on his back. He’d said there was a lantern and matches inside.
The night was as deep and dark as a pot of coffee. The forest rustled in a way that made Prue’s skin creep. But she wasn’t about to complain about that or about the blister popping up on her heel or how the sleeves of the ugly brown dress were chafing her elbows. She was out of the tower. That’s what counted.
“When I was a boy,” Hansel said, “I loved to play in the forest all about here.”
“You grew up in the castle?”
“I did.” Hansel paused to lift a bramble so Prue could pass underneath. “My family has been living at Schloss Grunewald for many, many years. As servants. I had a little playmate, just my age, named Franz. We would come out here with my dog, Wolfgang, and romp and fish, practice with our slingshots on the poor birds—”
“On the sparrows?”
“Poor little creatures. I regret it now.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t be too sore. Sparrows ain’t as nice as they’re made out to be.” Prue shuddered at the thought of those sharing her tower.
“Well, one day—I have never forgotten this—we were playing up here, on a cliff. Wolfgang was digging about and barking, as he often did. He dragged a bone to us and laid it at our feet. He had done this sort of thing before, having found the bones of deer or rabbits and once, the skull of a boar. But this bone. . . .” Hansel fell silent.
“What?”
Hansel turned to help her up a slick boulder. The path had grown steep as a staircase, and the brush hunkered over like it was trying to cover a secret. But Hansel’s hand was strong and warm. So Prue probably didn’t need to pay mind to the feeling that something with horns and teeth might bound out of the darkness at any second.
They paused, panting, on top of the boulder.
“It was a human bone,” Hansel said. “A radius—a bone of the forearm.”
Prue licked her lips and drew closer to him. In a vague sort of way, she wondered how a servant knew the word radius.
“Yet,” he said, “an exceptionally small radius, although not delicate enough to be that of a child. When we looked about we discovered, up on the top of the cliff, a grave, marked by a stone. The stone was covered in moss. It cou
ld have passed for one of the other mossy stones up there. Except this stone was marked.”
Prue stared up into Hansel’s shadowed face. The sky behind his head swirled with moon-milky clouds and a few lonesome stars. “What was the mark?”
“The Roman numeral four.” He lifted his finger and traced the sky. IV.
“That where we’re headed now?”
Hansel cocked his head towards the steep, gloomy path. “We are nearly there.”
* * *
Ophelia and Professor Penrose crept through the rustling forest. It had grown cool, and wind rocked the black branches and sent clouds coursing across the moon.
“I don’t know how to get back,” Ophelia said. Her voice was extra firm. Something about Professor Penrose bubbled all the fight in her right up to the surface.
“I’ve a good idea,” he said. “Stay close, try not to make a sound, and watch where you put your feet. Thank heavens the moon is so bright.”
They set off.
As they tramped through the trees, Ophelia saw that the professor was limping. But it was still reassuring—more than she liked to admit—to be close to his tall, sportsman-like form.
After several minutes, they began walking alongside a stream in the shadow of some sort of cliff. Ferns dragged at the hem of her cloak, drenching it with dew, and the heels of her boots sank in the spongy earth. But Penrose moved, despite his limp, easily through the terrain.
You’d think that a bespectacled scholar wouldn’t be so sure of himself in the nighttime forest.
Ophelia eyed his back. He could be leading her straight to the gates of Tartarus. What reason did she have to trust him?
Just then, Penrose froze.
Ophelia’s heart set off at a gallop. She didn’t even mind the way his big hand wrapped around her wrist, because there was a rustling coming from the opposite side of the stream.
Penrose pulled her down to a crouch beside him.
They watched through the ferns as a form—a human form—skulked along the streambed, heading in the direction of the hunting lodge. It was Herz.
Ophelia’s palms started to sweat. She would’ve rather seen Mr. Wolf all dressed up like Granny.
They waited, frozen, as Herz passed. The professor’s fingers were still around her wrist, and she was pressed up against his big, tweedy body in an unseemly fashion. Even as her eyes followed Herz, and as her blood thundered past her eardrums, she noticed, again, the professor’s mild scent of shaving soap.
Her ears went hot.
After a minute or two more, Penrose released his grip on her wrist. “I think,” he whispered, “it’s safe to go. But we must travel quickly, because once he reaches the lodge and realizes we’ve gone, he’ll be tracking us like a foxhound.”
They set off again, following the stream, and after several minutes they turned away from the streambed, into the trees. When Ophelia caught a glimpse of the castle through the branches, she sighed in relief.
They passed through the trees and found themselves on some kind of unused cart track. Tall grasses and wildflowers swayed, silver in the darkness.
“This track leads into Schilltag,” Penrose said. “I took it earlier this evening.”
“Is that—” Ophelia squinted. “Are those lights up ahead from the village?”
The professor stopped so suddenly that Ophelia bumped into his back. “No. Those are lanterns, just round the bend. Quick—behind the trees.” They scurried off the track and waited.
The two yellow splotches of light didn’t move.
Ophelia and the professor picked their way closer, staying inside the trees, to find a coach standing on the track. It was large, elegant, raven-black, with two horses and two lamps. A coachman hunched on the driver’s box with his face buried deep in his collar. He was asleep. There was a crest on the coach door, and the curtains were drawn.
“Do you recognize the crest?” Penrose whispered.
“Well, it’s not the Schloss Grunewald crest, and that’s the only crest I’ve ever seen.”
The only real one, anyway; Ophelia had seen plenty of fake ones painted on stage props.
One of the horses swiveled an ear in their direction. Ophelia and Penrose sank back into deeper shadow.
“Let’s stay right here,” Ophelia whispered, “and see who the coach is waiting for—I’d wager it’s to do with Herz and whoever he’s working for.”
“I must return you to the castle.”
“You make me sound like a princess.” She perched on a fallen log. “Either that or an express mail parcel. I don’t need beauty sleep, and no one will notice I’m gone. I’m staying.”
The professor straightened his spectacles. Ophelia could tell that’s what he did when he was nettled.
But he kept quiet, and after a few minutes, he sat down next to her on the log to wait.
* * *
Prue and Hansel reached the top of the ladder-steep path. Prue tried her best to wheeze in a ladylike way. Didn’t work. She sounded like she was auditioning for the part of a bellows.
They had arrived on a cliff that was about the size of a theater stage, jutting out like an open dresser drawer on the side of the mountain. The cliff was littered with rocks of different sizes, probably tumbled down from above.
“Be careful,” Hansel said, pointing. “That is a very steep precipice over there.”
Beyond the cliff, the whole black-and-gray world opened out, with rolling hills stretching back and back under a starry sky. “Never been out in the countryside at night,” Prue whispered.
“Never?”
“Nope. I feel like I might just—just disappear or something.”
Hansel was eyeballing Prue through the dark. But not in the way she was used to having men eyeball her, like she was a picture hanging on a wall or a bauble for sale in a shop window. He only looked . . . curious. She wasn’t sure she liked it. He could probably see the knots in her hair.
“Well?” she said, rubbing her nose. “What’re we going to do?”
Hansel knelt and drew the lantern from his knapsack. The first two matches died in the wind, but the third one caught. Yellow light swelled. He slammed the lantern’s little door shut, and stood. “We are going to confirm my suspicion that the skeleton that was placed in the cottage was dug up here.” He lifted the lantern and climbed over the jumbly rocks.
Prue followed. The rocks were fuzzy with moss, in every size from shooter marble to steamer trunk. “How are we going to find a rock with something carved in it?” She bent to study a stone.
“We do not need to find the stone.” Hansel turned and beckoned. “Because we have found the grave.”
“Grave?” Her boots didn’t seem to want to go any farther.
Hansel hopped down from the rock he’d been on. The lantern swung to and fro, creaking. Its light was too puny for such a big, dark night.
Prue looked down at her boots. They started to move. She crept to Hansel’s side.
At their feet was a big, dark, damp hole.
“It’s empty,” he said.
“Whoever dug it did it all sloppy, like.” Prue pointed to the edges of the hole. “See?”
“Perhaps they were in a hurry.”
“Nope. Not in a hurry. Just drunk.” She gestured to the far side of the hole. There was a pile of dirt over there, and on top of the dirt were two shining bottles.
11
Prue and Hansel circled around and picked up the bottles. Both were empty. Prue gave one a sniff. “Brandy.” She wrinkled her nose and tossed the bottle back into the dirt. It landed with a clunk.
Hansel held the other bottle up. “It is still wet inside. This was left here quite recently.”
“A couple weeks?”
“Perhaps even in the last few days.”
They stared at each other through the g
loom.
“Someone came up here to get fuddled up,” Prue said.
“And to dig up the grave. Which they must have intended to do in advance, because they would have needed a shovel.”
“Then, for some reason, they went to all the trouble of hauling the skeleton to the cottage and leaving it there.”
Hansel held up the lantern and bent over the dirt pile. “There are footprints.”
Prue hitched up her hem and crouched next to him. “That’s a man’s boot print,” she said. “And so is that one—that one’s a different size.”
“There were at least two men, then.”
“Should hope so, considering they polished off two bottles of popskull. Wait.” Prue squinted, then poked at the dirt. “Now this is not a feller’s print at all. It’s a lady’s.” She swiveled to face Hansel. “What in tarnation were these folks doing, drinking out here and digging up skeletons? It’s downright ghoulish.”
“I agree.” Hansel helped Prue to her feet. “Are you frightened? You are shaking.”
“No, I ain’t,” she fibbed.
“We should go back.” He still had her hands. “We have learned what we needed to know. However, I should like to have a look about before we go. Do you wish to sit here on this rock for a moment? Here.” He shrugged his jacket from his shoulders and folded it around her.
Prue quirked her lips. Him being so nice made her want to cry for some reason. “All right.” She sure as Sheboygan didn’t want him to see her boohooing. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
He went off with the lantern, bending to see the ground.
Prue didn’t sit, but she hugged the jacket close. It was homespun wool and scratchy. It smelled like Hansel, sort of fresh and leafy.
She’d have to tell Ophelia about this, after all. Sigh. Because this jaunt had turned into something serious, something to do, just maybe, with Mr. Coop’s murder. Prue mentally crossed her fingers that Ophelia wouldn’t be too sore.
She glanced into the black pit of the grave. Instinctively, she edged away, backwards into the dirt pile.
Something crunched under her boot heel.