by Maia Chance
“Indeed.”
“But that is all I know.”
“Is it?”
“Er. . . .”
“What of the lady he went upstairs with only minutes ago? A wealthy-looking lady, in pink.”
“Sir, you must know what sort of place Baden-Baden is. The gamblers. . . .”
“Hunt is a gambler? Perhaps in debt?”
“N-not that sort of gambler.”
“I see. And is there a Princess Verushka in residence as well?”
The bellboy frowned. “No.”
“Are you certain?”
The bellboy puffed his chest. “I always know every single guest, and there is no Princess Verushka at the Hotel Europa.” He emitted a yelp, and his chest deflated. “I beg your pardon, but I must go.” He skittered off in the direction of the reception desk, before which a portly, managerial-looking gentleman had begun to pace.
* * *
Gabriel didn’t tell Miss Flax what he’d learned from the bellboy until they were back outside on the sunny sidewalk strolling away from the hotel.
“Well?” she said, breathless.
“There is no Princess Verushka in residence at the Hotel Europa.”
“I’m certain that’s what Mrs. Coop said.”
“She was lying to you. Or Princess Verushka lied to Mrs. Coop about where she was lodging.”
“Or Princess Verushka is not her real name. Or she’s booked into the hotel under an alias.”
“You’ve a diabolical imagination, Miss Flax. How ever do you think of such things?”
She was silent.
His conscience gave a twinge. The poor girl was only trying to help.
“It is,” Gabriel said, “rather interesting, because this would not be the first instance of Princess Verushka being caught in a lie.” He told Miss Flax about how he’d encountered the princess rifling through Coop’s desk. “I also learned from the bellboy,” he said, “that it seems our Mr. Royall Hunt is a fortune hunter.”
Miss Flax frowned.
“That is,” Gabriel said, interpreting her frown—despite the whiskers and spectacles—as one of naiveté, “a gentleman who hopes, like a debutante, to make his fortune through a good match, but who in the meantime supports himself with the . . . attentions of wealthy ladies.”
He hated discussing this with her. True, Miss Flax wasn’t exactly a debutante herself, but there was an innocent air about her.
“If ladies may do it,” she said, “gentlemen should be able to as well.”
Gabriel quirked up a corner of his mouth. “The important thing is, this explains how Mrs. Coop and Miss Amaryllis made Hunt’s acquaintance so quickly after their arrival in the neighborhood: he is presumably on the lookout for wealthy ladies. He knows how to flatter and charm his way into their good graces.”
“But he couldn’t have fancied that Miss Amaryllis possesses a fortune, could he? And he couldn’t marry Mrs. Coop because she’s already. . . .” Miss Flax’s voice trailed off, and she came to a standstill. Pedestrians flowed around them as she stared up at Gabriel. “She’s not. She’s free.”
“Free as a lark, and very, very wealthy. That’s what we might call a rather good motive for murder, isn’t it?”
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” Ophelia said.
“Whatever for? And shouldn’t you be returning to the castle soon? Surely Mrs. Coop shall be expecting—”
“We’ve got to look around Mr. Hunt’s chamber. If we are to convince Inspector Schubert to stop thinking of Prue as the murderer, we must show him something that’ll convince him once and for all.”
Penrose set his teeth.
“You know I’m right.”
“This is harebrained.”
“It’s necessary.”
He sighed. “Very well. Shall we sit in that café across from the hotel and watch for them to come back outside?”
* * *
Prue paced, twiddled her thumbs, and dodged sparrow ploppings for eternity and a day. At last, she heard Hansel’s voice in the garden.
She hurried to the window.
He was flushed, tipping his head to see her. “That woman you saw is indeed a tourist. Staying at Gasthaus Schatz, in the village. British. Her name is Miss Gertie Darling. She has been tramping about the forest for days, and she will not tell the innkeeper’s wife what she is about. She has just eaten her luncheon at the inn and is returning to the forest. I mean to follow her.”
“Throw me the key! I want to come, too.” The key opened the tower door from either side.
“Someone will see. It is daylight.”
“Not in the forest it ain’t. Besides, I saw her first.” Prue batted her lashes, just in case Hansel needed more convincing. Hopefully he could see her eyelashes from down there, and her pretty new plaits. Not her shiny nose and chin.
Hansel heaved a sigh, pulled the key from his vest pocket, and tossed it up through the tower window.
The clank of the brass key hitting the stone floor was the sweetest sound Prue had heard all day.
A coiled stair connected the battlement outside the tower door with the kitchen gardens below. Prue scurried down the stair and burst out into the sunlight.
“Hurry,” Hansel said. He was already jogging towards the door in the garden’s outer wall. “She was going in the direction of the orchard.”
No sooner had they passed through the door than they saw Miss Darling’s ample, biscuit-colored backside sway into the dark of the pine trees at the bottom of the orchard. They hurried after her.
The orchard was hot and bright, but the forest, when they stepped across its leafy edge, was all coolness and shifting shadows. Sun mottled the floor, illuminating orange-and-white toadstools, flitting butterflies, wafting ferns, and moss-fluffy tree trunks.
They paused to listen. Snapping and crunching up ahead.
Miss Gertie didn’t tread silently like a fur trapper.
Prue and Hansel minced their way around crackly things on the forest floor. They came to a walloping big tree that had fallen slantwise. Side by side, they peeked over it.
Gertie crouched many paces ahead, half obscured by a clump of thicket. She was staring through a pair of binoculars. She balanced a notebook on her squatted knees, spread open across her skirt.
Something in the green shadows had snagged Gertie’s attention. The binoculars were glued to her eyes. Her shoulders were hunched, her mouth slightly ajar. From time to time, she paused to scribble in her notebook, and then she’d press the binoculars back to her eyes.
One of those scientific ladies. Prue had heard of them. They liked to pin beetles to cork boards, stalk zebras, collect rocks in jars, wade into ponds after tortoises—
Hansel poked her.
Gertie was on the move.
They crept after her, keeping to the deepest pockets of shadow. A few minutes later, they saw her again, this time ogling through her binoculars at—
Prue clapped her hand over her mouth to keep in a guffaw—
At Mr. Smith, Homer T. Coop’s secretary.
Mr. Smith was far off enough to resemble a mantelpiece figurine. He perched on a large rock, swinging his stumpy legs and doing something with his shotgun. Loading it up with bullets, maybe.
“He enjoys hunting,” Hansel whispered. “Fowl, I believe.”
“Poor Mr. Smith’s just minding his own business.” Mr. Smith had always been kind to Prue. “That Miss Gertie, she’s a—a peeping tom. It’s downright rude.”
Hansel’s eyes twinkled. “But we are spying on Miss Gertie.”
There came the tinny sound of Mr. Smith whistling. He laid his shotgun over his shoulder, hopped down from the rock, and marched further into the trees.
Gertie jammed her binoculars and notebook into her satchel and went after him. She hadn’t gone three
paces when she screamed. Then she crashed, flailing, to the ground.
* * *
“Aaaaaaah!” Miss Gertie wailed into the treetops. Startled birds flapped away.
“We must help her,” Hansel said, springing forward.
Hansel and Prue hurried to Gertie’s side. Gertie was a pile of rumpled beige linen and snarled satchel straps. Her straw hat was askew, and one long, blond braid dangled over an ear. Her eyes were screwed up, and her face was the exact shade of lobster bisque.
“What’s the matter?” Prue said, out of breath.
“Where did you come from?” Gertie unscrewed her eyes. They were small, a silvery color, and eerie without eyelashes. “What are you waiting for, you silly little ninny! Get this bloody thing off my leg!” She had a British accent, just like Prue had used sometimes in Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties. Well, sort of like it.
“Your leg?” Prue stared down at Gertie’s tangle of large leather boots and wrinkly skirts. Mixed in the jumble were two green apples. The kind from the orchard, with the pinky streaks.
The kind, as matter of fact, that Mr. Coop had been killed with.
Gertie met Prue’s eyes. Gertie swallowed.
Hansel knelt beside Gertie. He gingerly drew back the hem of her skirt to reveal a leg like a jumbo bowling pin in a white woolen stocking. It was sandwiched between the jaws of a rusty iron trap. Prue gasped; red wetness seeped through the white stocking.
“Get it off, lad!” Gertie yelled.
“Be patient, miss,” Hansel said. “These traps are meant only to be opened with a special key belonging to the woodsman.”
“You are not bloody saying,” Gertie roared, “that you’re going to go toddling off after a key while I—”
“No.” Hansel’s voice was firm. “I know how to open these traps without a key. But you must be still, or you will only hurt yourself.”
Gertie gnashed her teeth while Hansel fiddled with the springs on the trap.
Meanwhile, a thought hit Prue: funny that Mr. Smith hadn’t come running, too. Gertie had sure made enough racket. Maybe he’d just chalked up all the yelping to some wild critter.
There was a clink and a twang of the springs. Hansel pried open the jaws of the trap.
Gertie staggered to her feet and gathered up her satchel. “Damn and blast and botheration times ten thousand!”
“Allow us to help you to the castle,” Hansel said. “That wound needs tending to.”
Gertie cast a wistful glance towards the fold of trees where Mr. Smith had disappeared. Then she winced and took her weight off her injured leg. “I’d just as soon go back down to the village inn. Gasthaus Schatz. Do you know it?”
“Indeed I do.” Hansel glanced at Prue. “Although Miss Prue must return to the castle.”
Shucks. Prue had hoped he’d forgotten about the prisoner song and dance. “I’ll help as far as the orchard,” she said. She was itching to figure out what Miss Gertie was up to.
They limped along, over logs and around rocks. Gertie leaned her weight on Hansel’s and Prue’s shoulders.
Good thing Prue had eaten a hearty breakfast.
Prue licked her lips. “You known Mr. Smith long?”
Hansel shot her a have you lost your marbles? look.
Gertie said, “Mister who?”
“Smith,” Prue said. “The feller with the shotgun.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Gertie said in an airy tone, “any fellows with shotguns.”
Was Gertie really expecting them to buy that clunker? “What’re you doing in the forest, then?” Prue said.
“This and that.” Gertie winced again, and paused to bend and touch her leg. “I adore viewing the birds and whatnot.”
Prue and Hansel traded a look over Gertie’s bent back. Those binoculars of hers hadn’t once strayed to bird-level.
“Are you enjoying your stay in Schilltag?” Hansel said. They were wobbling along again.
“Nice enough place, I suppose,” Gertie said. “Bit dull. I suppose you natives are used to that.” She glanced sideways at Prue. “You’re not a native, what? One of the American family that’s been getting bumped off, I assume?”
“Not me,” Prue said. “Staying much longer in Schilltag?”
“No,” Gertie said.
She was clamming up.
“Them apples you dropped back at the trap,” Prue said. “Were they tasty?”
Gertie’s gaze kept forward. But her cheeks went from lobster bisque to fire brigade red.
“It’s funny, see,” Prue went on, “because they’re the same apples that done in Mr. Coop up at the castle. With a little poison mixed in, course.”
Gertie stopped in her tracks and tore her arm from Prue’s shoulder. “What precisely are you insinuating, you ill-spoken little muttonhead? That I had something to do with that appalling crime? Why, I’ve only been in Schilltag for three days. I have every right to be here and not to be accused of—of murder!” She stuck her schnozzle in the air. “I’m on a little holiday from the Hermannschen Heilanstalt für Lungenkranke in Baden-Baden, if you insist on prying.”
Prue didn’t have an inkling what that gibberish meant. But it sure had startled Hansel; his eyebrows had shot up. She’d have to ask him about it later.
“I,” Gertie said, waggling a kid-gloved finger an inch from Prue’s nose, “have never even laid eyes on Homer T. Coop.” She didn’t meet Prue’s eye.
She was blowing smoke.
“Then what’re you up to,” Prue said, “tracking his secretary, Mr. Smith, like he’s a rhinoceros on the plains of Australia?”
“Australia?” Gertie spluttered. “The rhinoceros, of the family Rhinocerotidae, is not found in—hold on a tick. Did you say secretary?” She tipped her head back, opened her mouth to reveal teeth as big and square as dice, and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Prue said.
Hansel, who was still supporting Gertie’s entire weight on his shoulder, looked like he was about to crumple to the ground with fatigue.
“Oh, ho!” Gertie wiped a tear of glee from her lashless eye. “Secretary!”
“Shall we continue on?” Hansel suggested in a wheezing voice.
14
Ophelia and Penrose had been waiting forty minutes over untouched coffees and unread newspapers, when they saw Madam Pink descend the hotel steps. She was alone, and she sailed away down the sidewalk. Hunt emerged a few minutes later in a fresh suit of flannels and set off in the opposite direction.
Penrose placed a few coins on the table. “Shall we?”
It wasn’t until they reached the door of room number seven that Ophelia realized they hadn’t had a confab about getting inside. But before she could pipe up, Penrose had wiggled his penknife—the same one he’d used to cut the ropes in the hunting lodge the night before—into the lock.
“You seem,” she whispered, “to have criminal tendencies.”
“Not tendencies.” There was a small click as the lock gave way. Penrose pushed the door inward. “Merely abilities.”
Ophelia followed him into the chamber. “Do professors usually have need for picking locks, then?” They were in a sitting room with flocked green wallpaper, high ceilings surmounted by rich moldings, and plenty of gilt clocks, marble busts, and beveled mirrors. Double doors opened onto a bedchamber. “I thought your sort read books all day.”
Penrose was picking things up, pulling open drawers, looking under sofa cushions. “What a stodgy lot you must think us.”
“I’m not the only one.” She watched him search. He was efficient and unruffled.
Almost, truth be told, as though he’d done this sort of thing before.
Suspicion washed darkly over Ophelia. How did she know if he was really a professor at—what had Mrs. Coop said?—Oxford University? Or that he was a professor at all?
&n
bsp; He glanced over his shoulder as he pushed open the doors to the bedchamber. “We must be quick about it.”
“Right. Sorry.”
The bedchamber drapes were drawn, but a slice of sunlight illuminated the rumpled bedclothes.
Madam Pink had been tickled all right.
Ophelia moved to the chest of drawers, which was scattered with silver brushes and combs, colorful silk neckties, bottles of scented Macassar hair oil, and cologne water. There was also a handsome mahogany dressing box. She pried it open. Inside was a jumble of handkerchiefs, cuff links, a fingernail buffer, several loose cigarettes, and a gold matchbox inscribed—she held it up in the shaft of light—For my divine Eros—L. B.
“Know of anyone with the initials L. B.?” she called to the professor, who was pawing through the wardrobe.
“L. B.? No.” He glanced over. “He’s got mounds of trinkets from ladies—gold toothpicks, diamond tie pins, and the like—in a box here. It’s part of his profession, but I must hand it to him, he’s careful to keep them out of sight.”
“I wonder how he makes ends meet? He can’t live on pawned cigarette cases.”
“Not by the looks of his clothing. He’s got a Bond Street tailor.”
“Well, I reckon he must look the part,” Ophelia said. “He is, in a way, an actor. All those rich ladies wouldn’t traipse around with a gentleman in a second-rate getup, now would they?”
“An actor,” Penrose said. “That’s remarkably astute, Miss Flax.”
He shot her a look that was, itself, just a smidge too astute.
Ophelia gulped.
She nestled the matchbox where she’d found it in the dressing case.
She was about to close the lid when something caught her eye. “Professor . . . I think I’ve found something.” She pulled a folded hankie from the bottom of the box. “This belongs to Miss Amaryllis.”
Penrose was beside her. “Are you certain?”
“See the lilacs embroidered on the corner? She’s got a whole set of these. Lilacs are her favorite.” She sniffed it. “It smells like lilac eau de toilette, too—this handkerchief has been scented.”
