by Maia Chance
“Miss Amaryllis wears lilac toilette water?”
“Nothing else.”
“Don’t say it.”
“Say what?”
“Oh, you know what I mean—I told you so.”
“I thought that went without saying. Now, if Mr. Hunt kept her hankie—”
“It would appear that he prized the token.”
“Which means that maybe that was him last night, waiting in the coach.”
“It would seem so. The troubling thing is, if Hunt is indeed a fortune hunter—and it appears that he is—it is highly unlikely that he would be inclined to return Miss Amaryllis’s regard. She is penniless, is she not?”
“The very definition of a poor relation. Mr. Coop never let her forget it, either.”
“So, then. The dove-like hearts of plain girls aside, I would propose that perhaps Hunt could be using Miss Amaryllis as part of a larger plan.”
“You think Mr. Hunt is the murderer?” Ophelia chewed her lip. All signs seemed, to her, to point straight at Amaryllis. Not Hunt.
“Who better to suspect, than a fortune hunter in close proximity to a colossal fortune?”
“But if Mr. Hunt wished to claim Mr. Coop’s fortune as his prize by marrying Amaryllis, Mrs. Coop would need to . . . die.”
Oh, lorks—that bottle of laudanum drops!
“Yes—if it is indeed the case that Miss Amaryllis would inherit her elder sister’s fortune, in the event of her demise.”
“Then Mrs. Coop could be in danger! And to think that I encouraged her to invite Mr. Hunt to the funeral tomorrow.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The next step is to observe Hunt and Miss Amaryllis together, and attempt to discern the true nature of their acquaintance.”
At that moment, there was the click-clack-click of a key in a lock.
They dove under the bed.
* * *
Ophelia’s left knee throbbed where it had hit the floorboards. She was crushed like a kipper against the professor, and her bowler hat was smashed down on her forehead.
They listened to the sound of footsteps in the outer sitting room.
Penrose lifted the bed skirt a few inches.
A woman’s black, buckled shoes moved to and fro, below a swinging black hem and the edge of an apron. A maid.
Penrose corkscrewed his neck.
There wasn’t much light beneath the bed, but she could’ve sworn he had a, well, a peculiar look in his eye.
The top of her bowler was stuck tight against the bed slats. She couldn’t turn away.
Ophelia’s palms sweated. She’d never been so close to a gentleman. Last night, when they’d been tied to the chairs and when they’d hidden in the ferns, they hadn’t been nose to nose. Even when she’d performed romantic scenes on the stage, the actors hadn’t had their thighs and shoulders shoehorned against hers. And those actors had reeked of greasepaint, overripe costumes, and stale cigars. The professor smelled like soap and pine needles.
And that look in his eye. It was at once gentle and a bit . . . surprised.
Well, of course he was surprised. She was wearing false spectacles, muttonchops, a wig, and she’d made her skin look like parchment. Professor Penrose was squashed under the bed with a scrivener out of a Charles Dickens novel.
Ophelia’s ears blazed. With effort, she turned her head away.
“She’s going to clean the washroom,” he whispered.
They watched as the maid plunked a bucket, mop, and a basket of rags on the floor. Then she took up the mop, stepped inside the washroom, and shut the door, all the while humming to herself.
“Come on,” Penrose said softly.
They edged out from under the bed and stole away.
* * *
Ophelia and Penrose didn’t speak as they left the hotel.
They managed to find, after poking through three jewelers’ shops, a floral brooch of jet beads for Mrs. Coop. Then they left the photograph of Homer—scowling and tuft-headed—that Mrs. Coop had given Ophelia for the jeweler to copy into a mourning locket.
All the while, Ophelia felt jumpy, and she hankered to get away from the professor.
He seemed distracted and aloof.
They found the hired carriage waiting in the Küferstrasse where they’d left it hours earlier, and Ophelia clambered inside.
Penrose didn’t join her. “I shall return to Schilltag later,” he said. “I’ll instruct the coachman to deposit you back at Gasthaus Schatz, since I presume you would not wish to be seen at the castle in disguise.” His eyes gave nothing away.
Something had changed when they’d been underneath the bed. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, exactly.
“I didn’t ask you,” he said. “Did anyone in the castle give any indication that they knew about what happened last night? With the woodsman, I mean.”
She shook her head.
“And no one said they’d discovered that slipper in the orchard?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps it’s safe—would you ask for me, of the old woman Matilda who works in the castle kitchens, if she knows of a tapestry with a design of seven miners?”
Dried fruit Matilda and her resentful stares. Ugh. “Snow White’s little men?”
He nodded. “I was told that the design on this tapestry is the same as that on the stolen ceiling beam. I am hoping that by studying it—if it indeed exists—I might unearth a clue as to why the beam was stolen. If Matilda does know of the tapestry, find out where it’s kept.”
“All right,” Ophelia said. “I’ll ask her. Fair’s fair.”
“What does that mean?” Penrose straightened his spectacles.
“It’s my turn to uphold the terms of our bargain. You’ve helped me out all day, after all. I’ll bet you have more important things to do.”
Now what had made her say that?
Penrose simply bowed his head as he shut the door.
Ophelia didn’t look out the window as the carriage pulled away from the curb.
* * *
In Schilltag, the hired carriage left Ophelia at the inn.
That morning she’d discovered an overgrown stone staircase zigzagging down the castle bluff, into the village. She’d spied it from a window—it started on the far end of a terraced side lawn—and had decided it’d be a better way to sneak than going through the orchard.
She walked up the lane from the inn and found the bottom of the stair behind a scraggly patch of bushes. She started up the steps.
There were probably hundreds of steps. The castle was almost overhead as she trudged upwards and the afternoon sun beat down. It was rough going, because of all the loose stones and crumbling bits of mortar, and she began to sweat beneath her woolen suit. She paused at one of the hairpin turns, in the shade of an overhanging juniper bush, to catch her breath.
From down below came the sound of steady footfalls and scattering pebbles.
If someone got a gander of her in this disguise—
She scampered into the bushes off to one side. She wasn’t completely covered there, but it was shady.
She tried to hold her breath.
The footfalls grew louder and louder.
And then there was little Mr. Smith, the secretary, hiking up the steps in a hunting jacket, tall boots, and a deerstalker hat. There was a knapsack on his back, a rifle strapped to his shoulder, and he was whistling “The Arkansas Traveler.”
He passed without seeing her and disappeared up the steps.
She allowed herself to breathe.
Only Mr. Smith. Returning from bird hunting by the looks of it. Well, the poor fellow deserved a holiday after the way he’d slaved away for Mr. Coop.
Ophelia waited five minutes, and then hastened up the steps, too.
* * *
/> “Miss Flax. I wonder if I might have a word?” Inspector Schubert crawled out of the shadows of the corridor.
Ophelia nearly screamed. “You’ll make a person fair turn up their toes in fright, sneaking like that!”
She’d made it up to her chamber unseen—as far as she knew—cleaned off her greasepaint, and dressed in her lady’s maid gown. But Inspector Schubert had been lying in wait for her just outside Mrs. Coop’s bedchamber door.
“I did not intend to frighten you.” Schubert massaged his fingertips together. “I was merely waiting, these many, many minutes past, to speak with you.”
“Yes. Well. Madam keeps me busy.”
“So I see.” Schubert paused.
Had she scrubbed off all the greasepaint by her ears? Sometimes she missed that spot.
“Mrs. Coop,” Schubert said, “informed me that you only recently made the acquaintance of Miss Bright.”
“That’s right.” Ophelia tried to remember exactly what she’d told Mrs. Coop. “We met in New York, only a few days before we sailed for Europe. At an agency. A domestic service agency.”
“Ah. And you were traveling to England to work in a grand household, I understand?”
“Lady Cheshingham’s.”
“Cheshingham,” Schubert murmured, as though committing the name to memory.
This called for a change of subject. A quick one.
“I wished,” Ophelia said, “to ask you a question, Inspector Schubert.”
He flared his nostrils. “Did you?”
“Has the American consulate been told about all this?”
“The consul shall be abroad for another week.” Schubert drew his thin lips back.
She’d have to ignore his anger. She might not get another chance to speak with him. “Who was it that overheard Prue conversing with Mr. Coop?”
“You are under the mistaken impression, Miss Flax, that it is your place to interrogate the police.”
“I only—”
“Impertinent, are you not? It is I who shall ask questions. Now. I wish to learn more about Miss Bright’s past, and you are the only person who knows anything about her.”
“Like I said, I haven’t known her long. I reckon you’re looking for evidence against her, but I really haven’t got anything to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Madam will be wanting me.”
Ophelia slipped through the door and shut it behind her.
At least Inspector Schubert seemed to know nothing about last night’s incident in the forest. Not yet.
15
Mrs. Coop was at the dressing table in her boudoir, her face buried in her arms. She was bawling.
“Ma’am?” Ophelia hurried to her side.
Had she found out that Mr. Hunt wished to kill her and marry Amaryllis?
“Are you hurt, ma’am?” Ophelia said.
“Hurt?” Mrs. Coop lifted her puffy, pink face. “Don’t be a fool! I’m heartbroken. Where have you been?”
Ophelia found her a hankie. “Your sorrow is very fresh,” she said, “but it’ll pass in time. When my mother died, I thought I’d never—”
“Not Homer!” Mrs. Coop’s tone was raspy.
“Not—?”
“This!” Mrs. Coop pointed a plump, trembling finger at her own face. “I look an absolute fright, and Mr. Hunt is coming to the funeral tomorrow. Can’t you do something?”
* * *
When Gabriel returned by hired carriage to Schilltag, he sent a brief note up to the castle, addressed to the gardener boy, Hansel. The note requested that Hansel pay Gabriel a visit at the inn, at the boy’s leisure.
Gabriel wished to quiz the lad about how to access the gravesite on the cliff. The Grunewald woods were such a tangle of paths and undergrowth, Gabriel was not certain where to begin.
He could scarcely keep still for the crackling anticipation. Because, if that cliff and that grave were what he suspected they were, well, what a stupendous find.
But Hansel did not come, and he did not send a reply.
* * *
Ophelia saw Hansel in the kitchen, when she was waiting for Cook to finish assembling Mrs. Coop’s dinner tray. Hansel was, it seemed, the only cheery person in the castle. Mrs. Coop lay like a log upstairs, her face covered in the mask of French green clay and honey that Ophelia had mixed up for her. Amaryllis was holed up in her own chamber, Mr. Smith had gone out hunting again, and all the other servants were crotchety.
Probably on account of the funeral tomorrow.
Ophelia took Hansel aside.
“Poking around with Prue, are you?” she whispered.
Hansel blushed. “I—I am sorry, I do not know what came over me. She is quite persuasive, so I—”
“No matter. Every soul is at liberty to save their own skin. Only, Hansel, please take care of her, and I’d also be most obliged if you kept me informed of your discoveries.”
“Oh, yes. Prue told me that you are doing a bit of sleuthing, Miss Flax.”
Ophelia lifted her chin. “Merely making judicious inquiries.”
“We did learn about the lady in the straw hat this afternoon. She is a British tourist, called Miss Gertie Darling, staying in Schilltag—”
Penrose had hit that one on the nose, then.
“—and when we followed her into the woods, we discovered her, by all appearances, spying upon Mr. Smith.”
“Mr. Smith?”
“With binoculars. And taking notes.”
Odder and odder. Ophelia shook her head. Well. It took all sorts to make a world. Bunking in a circus wagon with the Fat Lady and a girl who could sit her own feet on her shoulders while walking on her hands had cemented that notion. And if some tourist had set Mr. Smith in her sights, who was Ophelia to judge?
“Miss Darling lied about why she is here,” Hansel said. “She told Prue and me that she had been staying in Baden-Baden at the Hermannschen Heilanstalt für Lungenkranke.”
“The what?”
“It is a sanatorium—a sort of long-term hospital. For invalids. There are several in Baden-Baden, because the thermal springs there are thought to have curative powers.”
“She is an invalid?”
“That is the trouble—she appeared healthy as a horse. And her claims are particularly strange because the Hermannschen sanatorium is for those afflicted with diseases of the lungs.”
“Consumption?”
Hansel nodded.
“Lying,” Ophelia murmured. “Perhaps she had nothing to do with Mr. Coop’s death. All the same, she has been snooping around the castle forest.”
“And spying upon Mr. Smith.”
“Yes. And there were lady’s footprints at the cliff gravesite that may have been hers. I cannot fathom how, exactly, this Miss Gertie Darling could be involved in the murder and those missing things. Yet she appears to be suspicious.” Ophelia considered. “Only one thing to do, then.”
Hansel nodded. “I shall go to the sanatorium this evening, and discover if she is truly in residence there.” He ran a finger under his collar. “I shall ask Prue to stay behind this time.”
“Thank you, Hansel.” Ophelia turned to go. She stopped. “Oh—I near forgot. Would you do me a great favor and ask Matilda a question?”
“Certainly, Miss Flax.”
The thought of Professor Penrose made Ophelia feel unaccountably jittery and distracted all-overish. Something to do with his gleaming eyes under the bed in that hotel. . . . All the same, she’d agreed to hold up her end of the deal. She’d find out about the tapestry.
Hansel and Ophelia went to the chimney corner.
Matilda huddled on her customary stool, peeling potatoes with a green-handled paring knife.
Hansel crouched and embraced her. Matilda’s withered-apple face remained blank.
“What would you like
to ask her?” Hansel said to Ophelia. He took up the slate and chalk from the flagstones, and rubbed the slate clear with his cuff.
“Ask her . . . ask her if she knows of a tapestry that has a design of seven men on it. Little mining men, like Snow White’s.”
Hansel jerked his head. His brows were furrowed. “Why do you want to know this?”
“Um.” Ophelia swallowed. “It might be the same design that was on the ceiling beam taken from the house in the forest.”
Hansel’s usually pleasant face had taken on a hardness. “The stolen ceiling beam.”
“Um. Yes.”
“Who told you about the tapestry?”
“So there is a tapestry?”
He ran a hand through his blond hair. “Ja, there is a tapestry. Matilda told me about it once.”
“Would you ask her where it’s kept?”
“Very well.” Hansel printed in German on the slate. The chalk clicked and screeched.
Matilda’s eyes smoldered as she read the question. She snatched the chalk and scrawled something over Hansel’s neat handwriting. Then she thrust the slate back into his hands, muttering, and resumed peeling the potato.
“What does it say?”
“She writes, The tapestry was lost a long time ago. And, Maidservants should keep to their places.”
“Yes, well, thank you.” Ophelia fetched Mrs. Coop’s dinner tray and hastened out of the kitchen before Hansel could ask any more questions.
Ophelia was uneasy about Prue snooping with Hansel. Hansel was a good fellow—a little guarded at times, but a good fellow all the same. Still, Prue was a prisoner, if not exactly under arrest. If Inspector Schubert got wind of her doings, who knew what might come about?
And yet, the way Ophelia was thinking, this predicament was like any other sprawling, disheartening piece of work—a field to be plowed, a circus tent to be erected, a whole pantomime’s worth of costumes to be stitched. No matter the task at hand, the more people pulled together, the faster the job got done.
And, by gum, Ophelia was going to dig in and get this job done.