Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna

by Maia Chance

  Penrose told her how village boys had thrown rocks through the château windows that morning. “Something evil is brewing. Tolbert is missing, too, but he left all his things behind at the château. I have reason to believe he hasn’t gone far—perhaps he is staying in the village, or on a nearby farm.”

  Forthwith munched bread. “I am certain the man you saw was of no account, Ophelia. You can’t have slept well on the floor.”

  “The floor?” Penrose’s eyes softened. “Miss Flax, I chiefly wished to come here in order to ask if there is anything at all I might do for you.”

  She could ask him to help her get to the bottom of how and why Larsen and Banks had known each other before. . . .

  Penrose went on, “There is something else, too, of a more, ah, private nature.” He lifted an eyebrow at Forthwith.

  “You wish for me to scram,” Forthwith said through a mouthful. “Fine. Off to the lavatory with me, because there is nothing more pleasant than eating one’s breakfast in a lavatory of a three-hundred-year-old building shared with two dozen drunks. So long.” He stumped off.

  An awkward silence descended.

  “You . . . you are also occupying this chamber?” Penrose said, looking at Ophelia’s carpetbag.

  Her ears burned. “It isn’t—”

  “Miss Flax, I know you to be a lady of the most ironclad principles, and you need not explain anything to me.”

  “Thank you.” She looked at the envelope in his hand. “Who is Griffe’s telegram from?”

  “I know not, but it is from Cricklade, Gloucestershire.”

  “From Mr. Knight’s parish!”

  “I daresay they wish us to know that they’ve received the body.”

  “What if it’s a clue?”

  “Why would someone from a parish in England be in possession of a clue?”

  “That lawyer in London possessed a clue about Abel Christy’s father, didn’t he? Aren’t you curious?”

  “I am not in the habit of reading other people’s letters.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen you do it.”

  Penrose straightened his spectacles. Nettled again.

  “I’m certain you didn’t come here to quibble with me, Professor.”

  “I came to ask for your assistance, Miss Flax, something I could not ask of anyone else.”

  Ophelia almost said, What about Miss Banks? but kept her lips buttoned.

  “I trust you, Miss Flax.”

  “What is it?”

  “The fossilized jawbone.” He patted his jacket. “I must keep it somewhere away from the château.”

  Of course. Penrose wasn’t truly here to check on her; he was here on account of his moldy old fairy tale obsession. “You mean hide the jawbone. Where did you find it?”

  “In the cave. Tolbert had added it to his mad little shrine. I did not wish to leave it there for fear that it would be destroyed by the elements or carried off by an animal.”

  “Doesn’t it belong to Tolbert?”

  “I have grappled with this, and I have concluded that no, it does not belong to him. It belongs to all of mankind, to science or, at the very least, the French nation. I could not risk it being lost or destroyed.”

  Ophelia searched Penrose’s eyes but detected only a smidgen of maniacal glow. “Fine. I’ll keep it safe for you, but only under one condition.”

  “You always drive a hard bargain, Miss Flax.”

  “I believe in bartering. It’s ever so efficient. I’ll guard your fossil if you allow me to read that telegram.”

  Penrose laughed. “Good heavens, no.”

  “Then I won’t hide your jawbone.”

  “My chamber was ransacked last night. Tolbert is mad with desire.”

  Ophelia folded her arms.

  Penrose paused. He handed over the telegram. “Only be gentle with the seal. I’d like to stick it again.”

  Ophelia already had it open. “It is from someone called Mr. Appleberry—oh, he says he is the curate in the Cricklade parish.”

  “You see? We ought not to have—”

  “Mercy.” Ophelia reread the brief message. “Professor, that body they sent to Cricklade—it wasn’t Mr. Knight.”

  27

  “The wrong body? How can that be?” Gabriel took the telegram and scanned it. It was true; Appleberry regretted to inform the Count de Griffe that the body delivered to the vicarage was not Cecil Knight but a total stranger. “Then where, by God, is Mr. Knight?”

  Miss Flax cupped her elbows in her hands and began to pace. Brow furrowed, dark eyes flashing, she resembled a librarian on the warpath. “I should’ve guessed this ages ago,” she said. “That very first evening, Mr. Knight—or, I ought to say, his impostor—refused wine from the count. Yet he had a wine stain down the front of his shirt when I saw his body in the orangerie. He had that terrible scar on his neck, too, which at first made me think he’d tussled with criminals, although he blamed it on the heathens. Then Master Christy told me that Mr. Knight—or, the person he believed to be Mr. Knight—was a stranger to him, that he met him only for the first time on the dock in Marseille. That means that the impostor knew of Mr. Knight’s plans to meet Master Christy.”

  “The impostor could have known this firsthand from Knight,” Gabriel said, “or he could have stolen a letter from Sir Christy regarding the boy’s ship, or he could have come across the letter by happenstance and seized the opportunity.”

  “Any way you bake it, Professor, one thing’s clear: In order for the impostor to have met Master Christy at his ship without any impediments, he must have done something to the real Mr. Knight to keep him out of the way.”

  “Mr. Knight could be far away, and safe.”

  “Maybe. But I’ve got a sickly feeling about this. If the murderer—the count or Mr. Larsen or Bernadette, most likely—lured their victim all the way here by buying up those train tickets and bribing the stagecoach driver, he . . . or she . . . is a spider. A webmaker, see. If they planned all that out, well, they must’ve planned all the rest out, too.” A nauseous notion hit Ophelia. “What if the murderer killed the real vicar? I mean to say, what if the murderer paid someone else a great deal of money to kill him, in the same way they paid a great deal of money to clog up the railroad route and have the stagecoach break down? We’ve got to contact someone in Marseille—the police, I reckon—and learn if a man who could’ve been Mr. Knight was murdered in the days before Master Christy’s ship landed in Marseille.”

  “What of the police here in Sarlat?”

  “Those thugs?” Miss Flax tilted her chin. “If I walked into their gendarmerie, they’d probably take the opportunity to throw me in a cell. Remember, Mademoiselle Gavage and the count demanded the ruby ring back, but I don’t have it. Would you show me where the telegraph office is?”

  “As you wish.” Gabriel battled with an inappropriate frisson of glee that Miss Flax and he were, once again, back on the scent. Together.

  * * *

  They left the poodle chewing Forthwith’s boot and walked the few blocks to the telegraph office. Along the way, there was no sign of the brown-clad man Miss Flax had worried had been following her, although the streets were clogged for the market.

  At the telegraph office, they sent a message to the Marseille police station, asking if a gentlemanlike Englishman had been killed on or around December tenth. They decided it would be expedient to indicate that the telegram was from Lord Harrington, but Miss Flax insisted upon paying the fee, and she repaid Gabriel the money she’d promised for the telegrams to the train ticket offices, too. They meant to check back for a reply in an hour’s time. The telegrams transmitted over the wires within seconds, but they wished to give the police time to look into the matter.

  “It is only a remote possibility that the murderer killed the real Knight, but it is certainly worth asking,” Gabrie
l told Miss Flax as they stepped out onto the crowded street. He touched his coat, felt the shape of the jawbone beneath. Still there.

  “Hmph,” Miss Flax said. “You can’t argue with a hunch.”

  “Forgive me if this is indelicate,” Gabriel said, “but I happened to notice your rather healthy roll of banknotes.”

  “My savings. I found it last night—it wasn’t stolen after all. Oh—before I forget, for it is really very trivial and unimportant—earlier you said you came into town for three reasons.”

  Gabriel’s heart squeezed. “Yes. Yes, I did say that.”

  “Yet you only told me two reasons you had come—to ask if I’d hide the jawbone and to ask if there was anything you could do to help. What was the third reason?” They were caught in a tide of pedestrians oozing through the street towards the marketplace.

  “The third reason?” The third reason—which was really the first reason, the first thought in the foremost portion of Gabriel’s mind, was that he was in love with Miss Flax and must tell her so again, for he now knew that he could marry no other, that he did not wish to converse with another at any breakfast table in his future, or look upon any other in his bed. He opened his mouth.

  “Give it over,” someone with a gravelly voice said in French into Gabriel’s ear. A gun barrel dug into his back. “The bone. We know you have it.”

  “Run, Miss Flax,” Gabriel said, not moving his head.

  “Run?”

  “Run.”

  “Not without you,” she whispered, eyes on whoever was behind Gabriel.

  “I’ll join you shortly. I promise.”

  She blinked. She dodged sideways through the crowd and ran down a side street. Gabriel didn’t make another move until she was safely out of sight. Then, in a fluid motion, he spun around and socked his assailant in the jaw. The gun went flying. Bystanders screamed. The assailant crashed to the paving stones, bellowing.

  Well, well. If it wasn’t Vézère’s village blacksmith, Marcel, with his ship-rope sinews and bulging bull’s eyes. Charming.

  Someone else was upon Gabriel, a reedy man in brown, leaping for Gabriel’s neck with a knife. Gabriel kicked the man’s belly, and he folded.

  Gabriel shouldered through the jabbering throng and ran the way Miss Flax had gone.

  “We will have the bone!” Marcel yelled behind him in French. A gunshot cracked, and then another. Glass shattered, and a woman wailed.

  Gabriel dashed around the corner around which Miss Flax had disappeared. He froze. More twisty, tight medieval streets jutted off from where he stood like spokes. Which street had she chosen?

  “Over here!” he heard her call.

  There she was, hiding in a gloomy doorway. Gabriel dashed over, took her hand, and they were running again, towards the only street above which they could see the sky.

  Footsteps and gunshots banged out behind them. Thank God Marcel was a poor shot. He would need to reload soon.

  “We could run to the police station,” Miss Flax said, panting.

  “That may be our safest option. Here’s the marketplace.” They burst into the bustling square.

  “You cannot hide!” Marcel bellowed behind them.

  “We really ought to hide,” Miss Flax said.

  Hand in hand, Gabriel and Miss Flax waded into the crowded center aisle between the market stalls, edging and ducking around chattering women and baskets, laughing men and slinking cats.

  “Here,” Gabriel said, tugging Miss Flax into a space between two awning-covered carts. They crouched. Soggy cabbage leaves, bread crusts, and fish scales littered the paving stones.

  Marcel passed; he hadn’t seen them.

  “What about the other one?” Miss Flax whispered. “The—oof!” The brown-clad man had come up behind them and clamped a hand over Miss Flax’s mouth. He dragged her back, kicking and flailing. Her bonnet tumbled off.

  Gabriel sprang upon the man and ripped his hands from Miss Flax’s shoulders. As soon as she was free, Miss Flax bolted.

  They had an audience now, gawking market-goers in the mood for entertainment.

  Well, one must give the people what they wished for.

  Gabriel punched the brown-clad man’s nose. A sickening crunch. The man staggered into a barrel of red apples and sent them rolling. Hoots and cheers. Gabriel sprinted through an opening in the circle of onlookers. Where had Miss Flax gone? Where was Marcel?

  Gabriel swung his head, but the marketplace was a confusion of color and motion—wait. There she was, on the church steps, swinging open the enormous doors.

  By the time Gabriel was on the church steps, someone was just behind him. Marcel. They crashed against the doors at the same moment. They staggered together into cool, incense-scented dimness.

  Miss Flax was nowhere to be seen.

  “I will have the jawbone.” Marcel’s heavy shoulders rose and fell. His gun dangled at his side.

  “No, I don’t believe that you will. Why do you desire it?”

  “It belongs to the land here. Outsiders coming and stealing away things that have been here since time began? That is sin. The bone belongs in Vézère.”

  “Ah. Well, at any rate, I haven’t got it.”

  “I know you have. I saw you take it from the cave yesterday.”

  “It was you who searched my bedchamber last night?”

  “But of course.”

  Gabriel’s mind felt like a deck of cards fluttering in the wind. He’d been so intent on Tolbert. If it had been Marcel all the time . . . Could Tolbert be dead?

  “Give it to me,” Marcel said, advancing. “I know you have it inside your jacket. I have been watching you all day, have seen you touching your jacket to make certain it is safe.”

  Blast.

  “Now.” Marcel’s split lip, where Gabriel had hit him with the stool yesterday, was scabbed. Marcel lay the tip of his gun barrel on Gabriel’s forehead. “Give. It. To. Me.” He pulled the hammer.

  “You would murder a man in a church?”

  “I care nothing for these churches.”

  “Why not?” Gabriel hoped to distract Marcel, and it worked: Marcel’s eyes slid to the glimmering gold altar. “It is a young religion. Young things are always stupid.”

  Gabriel snatched Marcel’s gun by the barrel and twisted so hard he sent Marcel crashing to his knees. The gun skittered across the stone floor and under the pews.

  “Professor!” Miss Flax’s muffled voice cried from the stairwell behind Marcel.

  Gabriel and Marcel locked eyes.

  “No,” Gabriel said.

  “Why did I not think of it before?” Marcel was on his feet and barreling towards the staircase. “The girl.”

  “Miss Flax!” Gabriel shouted.

  She had nowhere to go but up.

  * * *

  Fear zinged through Ophelia when she heard the panic in the professor’s voice and the stomping footsteps.

  Marcel. He was coming.

  She went up. She hadn’t meant to dodge into some endless staircase. She’d hoped the door led to a closet or a passageway. Up she went, stumbling again and again. The steps were more shallow than she thought they ought to be, with slippery dips from centuries of feet. A stitch in her side made her gasp for breath, but she went still harder. Her hair came loose from its knot and tumbled down her back. Below her, the footsteps came, steady and heavy.

  There must be another way down, once she made it to the top. True, the wooden church spire in Littleton, New Hampshire—the only other church tower she’d been in—had one ladder, to reach the bell. Nothing else up there but a steep tumble of roof—

  Here. Here was more light pouring down the stairs and—yes!—she was at the top. A bell, massive and metal, hung from crisscrossed fat beams. Doves flapped away. Ophelia looked around wildly.

  There wa
s no other way down.

  Only open, arched windows on all four sides, dizzy flashes of rooftops, chimneys, hills, sky.

  Ophelia dashed to the side farthest from the stairwell. Marcel erupted from the stairs, black hair wild, sweat pouring.

  Their eyes met across the bell’s well. One second. Two.

  Marcel rushed one way, and Ophelia ran the other. They had completed one full circle when she stumbled next to one of the open windows. Rooftops and sky came rushing forward, but she broke her fall, fingernails digging into the stone sill.

  Marcel had her by the hair. Deep, tight, panicky pain. She yelped. More clattering footsteps were coming up the stairs.

  “Get off, you big oaf!” Ophelia yelled, jabbing her elbows.

  Penrose appeared in the corner of her eye. His face registered horror. He advanced, and in soothing French he spoke to Marcel. Ophelia caught the gist of his meaning: “Do not do anything rash, Marcel. You would not have an innocent young woman’s blood on your hands.”

  “What do I care of her blood?” Marcel sneered. “She is nothing to me, a stranger, and an American, no less.”

  Penrose pulled something from his jacket. Ophelia expected a revolver, but no: It was . . . a jawbone.

  Marcel loosened his grip on her hair.

  “You desire this, no?” Penrose said.

  “You damn well know that I do.”

  “You may have it. But first release Miss Flax.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “You needn’t.” Penrose shrugged and moved to replace the bone back in his jacket.

  “No,” Marcel said, almost growling.

  “I shall come closer,” Penrose said, “and place it in your hand as soon as you release Miss Flax.”

  “At the same time,” Marcel said.

  “Very well. At the same time.” Penrose came closer and held out the bone. Marcel released Ophelia’s hair, snatched the bone, and strode towards the stairs.

  “Miss Flax,” Penrose murmured, gathering her to his chest.

  Ophelia felt rag-doll limp and wet-eyed, so even though the professor was another lady’s betrothed and she, Ophelia Flax, was not one to wilt into a fellow’s arms like a popped dirigible, well, it somehow happened anyway. She pressed her face into his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. His solid arms wrapped around her. His breath warmed her ear, her cheek.