by Maia Chance
She was just fastening her hair into a complicated plait that hid the greasy bits when she heard a faint crunching sound. She dragged the stool to the iron-barred window and looked down.
It was that lady again, the one with the dun-colored walking costume and the straw hat. She was directly below and the brim of her hat was wide, so Prue couldn’t see her face. But Prue recognized her purposeful stride, girthy middle, and swinging satchel before she disappeared into the trees.
Downright peculiar.
Prue picked up the earthen water jug. She scurried to the tower’s other window and plunked the jug on the sill.
* * *
“Girthy?” Ophelia said. “Straw hat?” She was out of breath after the sprint from her bedchamber. She’d seen the jug in Prue’s window from her window and had skedaddled as fast as she could to the tower door.
“That’s right,” Prue said through the keyhole. “It’s the second time I’ve seen her, now, and it seems a sight suspicious.”
A lady. In the woods. “I wonder,” Ophelia said slowly, “if she might be the lady whose shoe prints you spied at the graveside last night.”
“Could be!”
“And what might she be doing in the wood? I had supposed, until now, that the suspicious folks were limited to those we already know—to persons residing in the castle. But what if . . . ?”
“You giving me your blessing to have another sneak out of this dump?”
Ophelia sighed. “I fancy I sound like a door hinge that wants oiling, but please, do take care.”
* * *
At a quarter past ten, Gabriel paced back and forth in front of the inn.
He’d told Professor Winkler that he had a few items of business to attend to, so Winkler had gone up to the castle without him. First, Gabriel had walked down to the telegraph office and sent a message to his landlady in Heidelberg requesting that his clothing trunk be sent. Then he’d arranged for a hired carriage.
Now the carriage stood waiting, but Miss Flax hadn’t turned up.
He took one last look up and down the village lane. Two small boys romped with a yipping dog in front of the butcher’s shop, and a few women strolled with wicker baskets on their arms, doing the day’s shopping. A wiry chap of middle years strode down the lane in a woolen walking costume and bowler hat.
Another British tourist, no doubt. Gabriel pushed the brim of his hat further down, not wishing to engage in pleasantries.
No go.
The chap slowed as he drew near. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?” he said in a crisp British accent, lifting his bowler.
“Indeed.”
The chap stopped.
Bother.
He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and his side-whiskers were graying. “Have you,” he said, “hired a carriage?”
“I beg your pardon. I’m not certain we’ve met.”
The chap waggled one of his bushy eyebrows.
“Now see here,” Gabriel said, “I don’t—” He paused. He’d noticed that, behind his spectacles, the chap had rather beautiful dark brown eyes.
“Miss Flax,” Gabriel said, straightening his tie and gazing past her shoulder. “Good morning.”
She tossed him a toothy, triumphant smile that was out of keeping with her side-whiskers.
Miss Flax’s smile was, admittedly, charming. But Gabriel didn’t wish to find Coop’s killer for Miss Flax; he wished to find the killer in order to get those stolen relics back.
And then, of course, there was the matter of someone searching his chamber last night. Gabriel had, albeit reluctantly, entered the fray.
“You didn’t think,” Miss Flax said, “I could go dressed as myself, did you? What would people think, seeing an unmarried lady sashaying around with a gentleman?”
“Are we to sashay?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Well, then, I am ashamed to admit I hadn’t given the matter a thought.” He studied her. The transformation was remarkable. “Didn’t anyone in the castle notice that something was amiss?”
“Sneaked out.”
“Naturally.” He led the way to the waiting carriage. He was no longer limping. “No sign of Herz, I trust?”
“None.”
“Good. And I am almost frightened to ask—how is it that you were able to put together such a cunning disguise?”
“I found this suit of clothes in a storeroom of the castle—they’re a decade out of mode. I reckoned you wouldn’t mind.”
“And your face? You seem to have aged forty years.”
“I’m a lady’s maid. It’s my business to be clever with cosmetics. You don’t think all those rich ladies happen to be more lovely than poor ladies by coincidence, now do you?”
“I never once thought that rich ladies were more lovely than poor ladies.” He moved to hand her into the carriage but stopped himself just in time.
“Well, they are.” She stepped up into the carriage and took a seat.
Gabriel seated himself across from her, shut the door, and the carriage creaked into motion.
“It’s because,” she said, “rich ladies have got more time and money to spend on pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.”
“Then their beauty is a put-up job? A confidence game?”
“You could say that.”
“What about your British accent? I must concede it’s convincing.”
She paused just a tick too long. “I was practically raised by an English lady.”
Gabriel tried to read the expression in her eyes, but she’d turned her face away.
* * *
Ophelia concentrated on the scenery. It was time to shut her mouth about her disguise before she gave too much away.
“Prue’s been doing a little sleuth hounding,” Ophelia said.
“You don’t mean—”
“Sneaking out of the tower. Yes. With Hansel, the castle gardener.”
“Ah. Hansel seemed a good lad, at least—helped carry the relics out of the wood and to the castle.”
Ophelia told Penrose about the bone, the cliff, the grave, the footprints, and the brandy bottles.
Penrose’s eyes gleamed. “An uncommonly small bone, you say?”
“Oh criminy—you don’t think it’s really a dwarf’s—”
“I merely wished for verification with regards to its purported dimensions.”
There he went again: wheeling out the fancy terminology to cover up the fact that he was a grown man who believed in fairy stories. “He said it was small. Oh, and there’s more.” Ophelia told Penrose about the straw-hatted lady Prue had seen in the forest.
Penrose knitted his brows. “I have seen that lady.”
“Indeed!”
“Once on the path leading up to the cottage, the day that Coop died. And again just this morning—she is staying at the Schilltag inn.”
“Wonder what she’s about.”
“Simply another British tourist, from what I gather. Surely she has nothing to do with anything.”
Their carriage followed the winding road down through the valley. They passed more and more houses, and then they were in Baden-Baden.
The town was built of meandering streets and filled with sparkling walled villas and hoity-toity hotels, shops, and restaurants. The sidewalks bustled with smartly dressed people, and the streets were crowded with rich carriages, many of them open. There were flowers everywhere—in window boxes, on balconies, in public gardens.
They even passed, in one of the public gardens, an orchestra playing in an outdoor pavilion. Ophelia’s ear caught a few snatches of La traviata. Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties had performed an abridged—and distinctly saucy—version of the opera a few years ago.
“This is,” Ophelia said, “one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen.” The green mountains of the Black Forest reminded h
er a little of New England, but New England’s sleepy hamlets and simple wooden buildings didn’t hold a candle to this.
“They call it Europe’s summer capital,” Penrose said. “It’s been quite the most fashionable town on the Continent ever since the gaming rooms opened up ten years ago. The czar banned gambling, you see, and gambling is illegal in France as well, so the Russians and French flock here. Invalids come here to take the waters and bathe, too. Sadly, countless people have ruined themselves and their families in the gaming rooms and at the races in Iffezheim. And some of these ladies parading about . . . well, they aren’t the sort of ladies you were acquainted with in New York.”
Oh, if he only knew.
“Let’s alight here.” Penrose rapped on the ceiling.
The carriage rolled to stop on a street marked Küferstrasse.
* * *
“I thought we’d have a good chance of sighting Hunt here,” Penrose said a little later. They were seated in an outdoor café that was shaded by a large tree. “This is one of the more fashionable streets. He’s a gallant, you understand.”
“Right. A dandy.” Ophelia surveyed the promenaders on the sidewalk and the other patrons in the café. All the ladies were got up like bonbons in pastel summer walking gowns and hats with flowers, and the gentlemen wore tailored suits. There was a lot of laughter and animated chatter, mostly in French.
“Hunt is not only a dandy.”
“No?”
“Do you remember,” Penrose said, “how Hunt insinuated that it was within his power to obtain an invitation for Mrs. Coop to be presented at court in England?”
“It isn’t?” Ophelia straightened her cufflinks.
The professor’s eyebrows twitched.
“You’ve got,” she whispered, “to look at me as though I were a gentleman. Not the bearded lady in the circus.”
“I beg your pardon. Your disguise is somewhat . . . disconcerting.” Penrose ahemed. “As I was saying, the odd thing is, I’ve never heard of Hunt.”
“Do you know everyone in England, then?”
He adjusted his spectacles.
Annoying him was far too easy.
“He’s pretending,” he said, “to be something he’s not.”
Ophelia glanced away. Not a welcome topic of conversation.
The waiter brought thimble-sized coffees. They watched and waited.
Ophelia was broiling beneath the wig and bowler. Worse, her left muttonchop was coming unglued from her cheek. She twiddled her spoon on the tablecloth.
“There,” Penrose murmured eventually, “is our man.”
“Where?”
“Across the street. Walking arm-in-arm with the lady in pink.”
Ophelia squinted through her false spectacles. Mr. Hunt was strolling with a rather plump lady who appeared, at least from this distance, to be approaching her middle years. Madam Pink wore a beautifully cut walking gown of seashell pink and a big hat piled with white roses, and she carried a parasol. “She looks mighty pleased to be with him.”
“And he appears pleased with himself.” Penrose was on his feet, placing some coins on the tablecloth. “Shall we follow?”
* * *
When Hansel turned up in the garden after lunchtime and started hoeing, Prue pelted him with the raisin bun she’d saved from her breakfast tray. It had gone nice and hard.
He sauntered over, hoe in hand, rubbing his crown where the bun had hit. “I intended to come over,” he called up to her.
She leaned over the sill. “Why’d you start hoeing, then?”
He glanced over at the door in the wall. “I did not wish to arouse suspicions. Speaking to prisoners is frowned upon in some circles.”
Prue’s cheeks flamed. Prisoner. She stuck out her tongue to hide her shame.
He grinned.
Prue told him about the girthy woman in the dun-colored walking costume and the straw hat. “That’s two times I’ve seen her so far. Ophelia said we ought to investigate.”
“Miss Flax said that?” Hansel’s eyebrows drew together.
“Ophelia’s looking into things. She’s going to get me out of here. So. Who is the lady in the walking costume?”
Hansel scratched his ear. “I do not know anyone in Schilltag who matches that description. She is most likely a tourist, staying at the inn. I will go ask the innkeeper’s wife if she knows. But first I must finish hoeing those beans, or Frau Holder will wring my neck.”
* * *
Ophelia and Professor Penrose trailed Madam Pink at a discreet distance. They passed grand hotels, cafés and restaurants, jewelers, haberdashers, and tourists’ trinket shops.
“Easy enough to keep sight of them,” Ophelia said, “with her wearing that enormous hat.”
“Rather. Like tracking an animated flowerpot.”
A block later, Ophelia noticed an advertisement hung on the side of a building, with French lettering in gold and colorful pictures of fairy tale queens, frogs, geese, and dragons. “What does that say?”
Penrose stopped to read the advertisement. “There is to be a masquerade ball tomorrow evening in the public dancing rooms—in the Conversationshaus—and the guests are to dress as fairy tale characters.”
“Everyone here is mad for fairy tales!”
“It’s the Black Forest. Come on. We’ll lose sight of Hunt.”
They followed for a few more blocks.
“What have we here?” Penrose pulled Ophelia into the doorway of a building. Slowly, they both poked their heads around the corner to see Mr. Hunt and Madam Pink ascend the white stone steps of a splendid hotel and disappear through the doors.
Ophelia became aware of the professor’s hand on her arm, and she tensed.
He dropped his hand.
She pretended to adjust the brim of her bowler hat. Wait. What was she doing gallivanting with this strange gentleman?
Oh, right: Prue. Prue was locked up in a tower, accused of murder.
“Presumably that is Hunt’s hotel,” Penrose said, “or else it is the . . . lady’s.” He ahemed again.
Mercy. If Penrose knew Ophelia was an actress, he wouldn’t have to be so delicate all the time. She knew exactly the sorts of things ladies and gentlemen got up to in hotels. Never mind that she’d never done any of those things herself.
On the other hand, if he knew she was an actress, he wouldn’t trust her as far as he could—well, the professor surely didn’t spit.
“Hotel Europa?” Ophelia said, noticing the elegant sign above the hotel’s doors. “Mrs. Coop told me that’s where Princess Verushka is residing.”
“Did she? Then we’ll kill two birds with one stone. Let’s wait until they come out. Then we’ll go inside and ask the hotel workers about both the princess and Hunt.”
Ophelia pushed her bowler down more firmly on her head. “I’ve got a better idea.” She was already setting off towards the hotel. “Let’s follow them and find out where they go.”
Penrose gained her side in a few strides. “Are you mad?”
“No. Bold.”
“How would we profit from this? Aside from being recognized by Hunt, that is?”
“And I thought you were logical.” Ophelia tut-tutted. “If it’s the lady’s chamber, then if we know its number, we may easily discover her name, and who she is, and perhaps what Hunt could be doing with her.” They trotted up the steps to the hotel doors. “And if it’s Mr. Hunt’s chamber. . . .”
“You can’t be serious,” Penrose said through gritted teeth. “Danke schön,” he said in a louder voice to the doorman, who bowed and held the door.
The lobby had pillowy carpets, fat velvet chairs, potted palms, and chandeliers dripping crystals.
Ophelia spied the hem of a seashell pink gown as it twitched around the landing of the grand marble staircase. “There they go,”
she whispered.
They tried to appear nonchalant as they hurried to the stair. At the top, they craned their necks left—the wide, carpeted corridor was empty—and right.
“Ah,” Penrose whispered.
Hunt was unlocking a door halfway down the corridor. Madam Pink hovered at his side.
Penrose jerked his neck, and Ophelia followed him back down to the staircase landing. They waited until they heard the sound of a door closing shut, and then returned to the upper corridor.
Hunt and the lady, they swiftly figured, had disappeared into room number seven.
From behind the polished door came the faint sound of Madam Pink’s kittenish giggles.
Ophelia lifted her eyes to Penrose’s and fought the urge to giggle herself when she saw his embarrassed grimace.
Poor fellow. Trying to shield her maidenly purity.
“Perhaps”—Penrose was ushering her back towards the staircase—“that is Mr. Hunt’s sister. Or cousin.”
13
In the lobby, Gabriel cornered a bellboy behind a potted palm while Miss Flax waited with a newspaper on one of the velvet chairs.
“Entschuldigen Sie bitte,” he said to the spotty lad, who wore a red suit decorated with brass buttons and a visored cap. “Could I trouble you with a few questions about two of the guests of this establishment?”
“We do not speak of our guests,” the bellboy said in a nervous warble.
“Nein?” Gabriel pressed a coin into the boy’s gloved palm.
“Well. Er.” The bellboy gawked through the palm fronds towards the reception desk. “You must be quick. Herr Lipsett will be looking for me.”
“Room number seven. A certain Mr. Royall Hunt is in residence?”
“That is correct.”
“For how long has he been staying here?”
“Since the start of the season.”
“This must be a very costly establishment. Is he current on his account?”
The bellboy ran a finger beneath his collar. “I do not handle accounts. I only carry luggage to and fro.”
Gabriel slid another coin in his hand.
“Now that I think of it”—the bellboy gawked again through the palm fronds—“I did hear Herr Schmidt, who manages the billing in the back office, say that Herr Hunt has not paid a thaler for several weeks past.”