by Maia Chance
“Yes, I noticed that.”
“I believe you’re avoiding me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are. Is it because I told you my grandfather was a king?”
“No.”
“Is it because of my complexion?”
“Certainly not.”
“Because you would not be the first person to be alarmed by my complexion, which is sad, really. It points to an impoverishment of imagination, since not everyone is as pinched and white as Robby St. John’s pet mouse.”
“Who is Robby St. John?”
“He’s at school. Thinks he’s better at geometry than I am, but that’s only because he cheats on his exams. Sticks a bit of paper with the formulas written on it up his cuff.”
“I’m not avoiding you, Master Christy. It is simply that, well, I prefer to work alone.”
“How stoic of you. I could contribute to your investigation, you realize. I have clues.”
“You do?”
Abel made a know-it-all nod. “Would it interest you to learn that the stagecoach driver—he’s called Gerard—deliberately broke the coach’s whippletree?”
8
“What?” Ophelia said.
“The whippletree,” Abel said. “You know, the wooden beam sort of thing with the iron rings that the horses’ harnesses are hooked to on the—”
“I know what a whippletree is.”
“The village blacksmith is supposedly mending it.”
“And the driver broke it deliberately?”
“Well, I did not see it happen, precisely, but I did see him doing something with a rather hefty pair of metal cutters. It was snowing hard last night, you understand, and dark—although Gerard had a lantern. We’d stopped just outside Château Vézère’s gates, although at that juncture I didn’t know that’s what they were. I assumed Gerard merely wished to relieve himself, particularly since I’d seen him swilling wine at the Sarlat Inn earlier. But I heard—or rather, felt—a kind of clanking, so I poked my head out and saw him going at the rings with the metal cutters. But then Mr. Knight and that crusty zoologist—Tolbert, is it?—and the frightening old woman with the poodle and the fallen-soufflé face all shouted that I was letting the snow in, so I shut the door.”
“Then the driver meant for the stagecoach to break down.”
“I thought that was rather obvious.” Abel pulled something from his pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief. A sticky-looking cake. He took a bite.
“You keep cake next to the insects in your pocket?” Ugh.
“The larva is in a vial. Perfectly sanitary.”
Ophelia had her doubts. “What if the driver damaged the whippletree in order to give himself the opportunity to, well, to do in the vicar?” She started down the stairs.
Abel trotted behind her. “I’m certain he did not kill the vicar. My room is next to his, you see, and the walls in the servants’ quarters are thin, so thin that I was forced to endure listening to Gerard and a lady giggling and carrying on through the night.”
“You needn’t—”
“They were playing hide-and-seek, from the sound of it.”
Oh, goodness. “That must have been it.” Ophelia lowered her voice. “Who was the lady?”
“How would I know? They all sound the same when they’re giggling like that. Bit like guinea pigs. At any rate, Gerard strikes me more as the sort who would damage his own carriage in exchange for a bribe. Not an enterprising chap, you see.”
“If someone bribed him to damage his coach, then that means someone may have planned Mr. Knight’s death. Planned it out in advance.”
“You mean to lure Mr. Knight to the château?”
“Yes.”
“It couldn’t have been planned too far in advance, because our route through this region was not Mr. Knight’s original plan. We only came through the Périgord because of some problem with the train. Would you slow down? I’ve got a stitch in my side now. In Nubia, men carry me about on a litter, you realize.”
“What about at your school in England?”
“Well, no.”
“What was the problem with the train?”
“I haven’t the slightest notion. Broken, I suppose. So in lieu of waiting about for the train, Mr. Knight decided we ought to take the stagecoach to Bordeaux and then board a ship to London from there. He was exceedingly impatient for a vicar. His sermons were doubtless blessedly short.”
“How long ago did you leave Marseille on the stagecoach?” They reached the bottom of the stairs and paused.
“It took us five days of travel to reach Sarlat.”
Ophelia would wager that Knight didn’t wish to wait around for fear of losing out on the reward waiting for him at the London solicitor’s office. And the Monte Carlo creditors were surely Madame Dieudonné’s reason for not waiting around for the train to be fixed, either. “Where do you think Gerard is now?”
“In the kitchen soaking up wine, or stuffing his face with food and harassing the maidservants.” They turned towards the kitchen stairwell. Abel trotted beside Ophelia, panting. “Repulsive, his behavior with the girls, although it is not entirely uninteresting. One is able to appreciate it in the same way one appreciates the breeding habits of mayflies. You know, your rather diabolical theory narrows down the suspects, by eliminating those traveling in the coach.”
“You mean Madame Dieudonné and Tolbert.”
“And myself,” Abel said, squaring his shoulders. “Or did you assume that I am incapable of murder simply by virtue of having not yet reached my full adult height?”
“Of course not. I assumed you were not capable of it because murdering a person is horribly unreasonable.”
Abel liked that.
The kitchen bustled with servants preparing luncheon. Ophelia and Abel hesitated on the bottom step. “Do you see Gerard?” Ophelia whispered.
“No. Let’s check his chamber.”
“Where is that?”
“Up in the Antarctic garret, next to mine. But allow me to catch my breath, first.”
They hiked all the way to the top floor, this time by way of a dank-smelling servants’ stair. Abel led the way into a chamber.
A man sprawled asleep on a dumpy bed crammed under the eaves. His mouth gaped, revealing crooked brown teeth. He was perhaps fifty years of age, with pebbly skin, greasy graying hair, and a shearling vest. He held a licked-clean chicken bone like a baby rattle. The room stank of wine and underarm.
Ophelia cleared her throat. “Monsieur Gerard? Wake up, monsieur.”
Snores.
Abel, wearing a look of distaste, stepped forward and prodded Gerard’s leg.
Gerard mumbled something and rolled over.
“He’s been at the wine like a calf at a teat,” Abel said. “I fancy there won’t be any waking him for hours yet.”
Ophelia felt like yelping with impatience. “Very well.” She turned to go.
Abel caught up with her. “Don’t attempt to tell me that you mean to practice the harp.”
“I’m going to speak with the village blacksmith, who’s repairing the whippletree. He’ll be able to confirm if it was cut deliberately or not.”
Abel balked. “I don’t know. . . .”
“You don’t wish to miss luncheon, do you? It smelled so savory and—”
“I am coming along.”
“No.”
“You require my assistance. I’ve been rigorously trained in classical logic. I work out Aristotelian syllogisms while I nap.”
“Doesn’t sound very restful. Tykes like you need their shut-eye.”
“Do you speak French, Miss Stonewall? Because I’d guess that the blacksmith does not speak English.”
Drat. “Very well. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.”
* * *
&
nbsp; Ten minutes later, Ophelia was bundled in her borrowed cloak and bonnet. She found Abel in the foyer, up to his ears in a puffy fur coat with a fur hat pulled low over his forehead. He resembled a well-fed beaver.
Outside, the sky was a damp, bruised gray. They walked down the snowy drive. The château gates stood open to the main road, and from there it was a several minutes’ walk into the village of Vézère.
Stone houses with slate roofs and wooden shutters hunkered. Smoke puffed from chimneys. In the pasture at the edge of the woods, a cluster of sheep, roly-poly in their winter fleece, nibbled at grass poking up through the snow.
“Did you bother to ask anyone where the blacksmith’s shop is?” Abel asked, mincing around a puddle.
“I didn’t need to. I grew up in a village. Do you hear that clanging?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the blacksmith, hammering.”
Abel stopped. “Perhaps we should come back tomorrow. It’s growing late—”
“Late? We haven’t even had luncheon yet.” Ophelia looked at Abel sharply. His eyes were huge. “Are you . . . afraid of something?”
“Certainly not. The very thought. Fear is the bilge of poorly educated minds.”
“Well, come along, then.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“If you must know, it is because I—well, I’ve got the most awful pain in my side, and I feel I must return to the château and rest.”
“Fiddlesticks. You’re frightened of the blacksmith. Why?”
“I’ve never met the chap.”
“Then what is going on?”
Abel scratched his round little nose. “In my country, blacksmiths are . . . well, people say—there are legends, I mean—that blacksmiths turn into hyenas at night.”
“Hyenas?”
“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”
“No, I didn’t. Anyway, I’m not laughing. But Abel, we aren’t in your country; we’re in France, and even though everyone is talking about beasts, the only animals I’ve seen are a poodle, a parakeet, horses, and a herd of sheep. Come on.”
The blacksmith’s shop was entirely open on one side, and the heat from the fire had melted the snow in an arc. A huge man hunched over an anvil, beating rhythmically with a hammer on a glowing bit of metal that he held between pincers.
“Well, if it isn’t Hephaestus,” Abel muttered, trying to sound cocky.
When the blacksmith caught sight of Ophelia and Abel, he froze, hammer in midair. He said something gruffly in French, and Abel responded in a reedy voice, cowering against Ophelia.
“What did he say?” Ophelia whispered.
“He asked who we are—I told him that—and our business. He’s rude, I’ll have you know. A brute. His name is Marcel.”
Marcel stalked towards them, hammer at his side. Muscles bulged in his arms, chest, and neck. His unusually wide-set eyes were reminiscent of a bull’s. The red glow from his fire threw the pocked skin of his cheeks into sharp relief.
Ophelia took an involuntary step back. “We wish to know about the stagecoach whippletree that you have been tasked to fix,” she said in her boldest tone.
Abel translated. Marcel snorted and said something that Abel translated as, “What do you wish to know—and what business is it of yours?”
Ophelia said, “Because we wish to know if it was damaged on purpose.”
Marcel spoke, and Abel translated, “I could tell you, but it will cost you.”
“A bribe?” Ophelia whispered to Abel.
“I told you blacksmiths are a dubious sort,” Abel whispered back.
“But I haven’t any money. Wait.” Ophelia reached under her bonnet and removed a hairpin. It was mother of pearl, belonging to Artemis Stunt. Ophelia would figure out a way to replace it later. “Offer him this.”
“I won’t go an inch nearer to that brute.”
“Fine.” Ophelia went to Marcel and held out the hairpin. He looked at it appraisingly and pocketed it.
Ophelia darted back to Abel’s side, feeling ridiculous. This fur-wrapped cream puff of a child couldn’t protect her from a flea.
Marcel said something. Abel translated, “The whippletree was broken deliberately. Three iron rings had been clipped with metal cutters, and then on the way here from the château gates, the wooden part snapped. He says he can’t do anything in the way of fixing the thing until a beam of ironwood arrives from Bergerac—evidently whippletrees require perishingly strong wood because of all the weight they bear. Oh, and he says he will slit our throats in our beds if we or any other outsiders come snooping about his hut again.”
Ophelia and Abel practically tripped on each other in their haste to get away.
* * *
In truth, La belle et la bête had always bored Gabriel. Fairy tales obsessed him, to be sure, but this particular tale was an exception. For while most literary fairy tales had their roots in old traditions, passed down by word of mouth for generations, La belle et la bête had never been anything but a product of Parisian authoress Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s eighteenth-century fancy. In some sense, it wasn’t even a proper fairy tale.
Except.
Except that the beginning of Madame Genepy’s tale had made mention of a stone castle that stretched deep into the womb of the earth. If the tale she had learned from the lips of her grandmother was even a relatively unadulterated version of a medieval tale . . . how special, and how incredibly rare. That would turn everything scholars believed about La belle et la bête on its ear. If Gabriel could date it.
After leaving Madame Genepy’s house, Ivy insisted upon a ride along the valley road, claiming boredom and a desire for exercise in the fresh air. Although Gabriel was burning to go to Château Vézère’s library—alone—a sense of duty compelled him to agree. So they, along with Banks, set out along a winding, snowy road that traced the black river.
When Ivy rode ahead of them, Gabriel said to Banks, “Miss Banks’s cotton dress . . .”
“Pshaw,” Banks said with a dismissive wave.
“Is it because you mill silk and wool?”
“Yes. No need for that nasty stuff.”
“But surely there is a great demand for cotton. I understand that during the war in America a few years back, the British embargo on Southern cotton resulted in a few fortunes being made in cotton, what with the trade in cotton from Egypt and India opening up—”
“Of course, of course.” Banks’s face looked purplish and congested, although maybe it was only from the cold air. “But Egyptian cotton’s poor quality, too—so’s Indian—no doubt about it. I only deal in quality goods, Lord Harrington. That’s something you must know about me. I don’t stand for any nonsense.”
No, he did not. Gabriel had learned that Ivy and her father shared a complex bond. After Ivy’s mother had died in childbirth, it had been Ivy and Papa, allied against the world. Yet at the same time, Banks had overseen his daughter’s education with a hawk’s eye and, Gabriel suspected, at times an iron fist. Banks was a self-made man, and he was determined to make a true lady of his daughter. At times Gabriel feared that Ivy had suffered somewhat for lack of tenderness. She was sweet, but she was also a bit, well, cold.
By the time they arrived back at the château, Gabriel was jumpy with impatience.
“I must go to the library and write down what Madame Genepy told us,” he said to Ivy and Banks in the stables.
Ivy’s lower lip protruded. “What about luncheon, Lord Harrington?”
“Soon,” he said over his shoulder.
The library was unoccupied, and he shut himself in. Hazy light illuminated carved shelves packed with books. Oak tables and high-backed chairs stretched the marble-tiled length. A huge globe squatted on a brass stand.
Gabriel methodically searched the shelves. He saw a remarkable co
llection of French literature, and books in countless other languages as well. Portfolios of prints. Sets of encyclopedias. Even a book of French railway timetables. Gabriel smiled. A comprehensive collection, indeed.
He soon found what he was searching for: a cabinet of drawers. His fingertips tingled. He opened the top drawer. Crumbling old maps of the world, some so antiquated, the New World was a mere blank. The drawers hadn’t prevented the vellum and parchment from acquiring a thick film of dust.
The next drawer held maps of Europe and France, and the drawer after that, at the top, a map marked Vallée Vézère. His breath quickened. He pulled it out and placed it on a table.
He longed to hear the rest of Madame Genepy’s tale, but in the meantime he could locate the medieval castles in the valley. One of them could be the original location of Madame Genepy’s tale.
Dust blurred the hand-drawn map. Except . . . what was this? Oval fingerprints, fresh fingerprints, spotted the edges, and two round sections had been rubbed clean, as with a handkerchief. The rubbed-clean portions lay along a tributary of the Vézère River, back into what appeared to be the hills, and both stopped at the word grotte. Cave.
Someone else had already examined this map, very recently. Gabriel fancied he knew who: Tolbert.
* * *
Ophelia saw Griffe riding his horse into the château stables just as she and Abel were returning from their visit to the blacksmith. Her stomach flipped.
“Thank you for translating for me, Master Christy,” she said. “I must go speak to the count.” If she could convince Griffe to stall the wedding, she’d have more time to find the ring.
“Not too keen on your better-half-to-be?” Abel asked.
“Nonsense.”
“You look like a cat who’s about to expel a hair ball.”
“I will see you later, I am certain.” Ophelia went towards the stables.
“Why are you certain?” Abel shouted after her. “You forget they’re holding me prisoner in the attic!”
When Griffe saw Ophelia enter the stables, something unreadable washed over his heavy features. “Mademoiselle Stonewall. But why do you venture into this so lowly place, eh? This is no place for a tender rosebud.” He proferred his arm.
