Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery)

by Maia Chance

  She shook her head. Tomorrow would be too late. The Leviathan was scheduled to anchor then.

  She caught a flash of motion out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head. First, she saw nothing but huge, black fern fronds bobbing under raindrops.

  It had only been a bird. Or a squirrel.

  She was about to turn back to Penrose when she saw the white, shining orb of an eye, just between two fern fronds, ten paces away.

  The eyeball was staring back.

  Her heart, she was fair certain, stopped beating.

  “Professor,” she whispered. “Look.” She couldn’t move her neck—it seemed to have seized up like a piece of rusty machinery—so she gestured with her eyes.

  Penrose’s eyes widened—he’d seen the eyeball—and his entire body stiffened.

  * * *

  There was an electric pause. Gabriel’s heart made two mallet strokes against his ribs. He reached into his breast pocket, wrapped his fingers around the cold handle of his revolver.

  Yellow light exploded from the ferns, accompanied by a sharp crack. Then the thunk of a bullet lodging itself in the tree trunk just behind his left ear.

  “Run,” he hissed.

  Miss Flax stood stupefied. He grabbed her hand and pulled her across the path and into the trees on the other side. They stumbled forward, wading through shadows, wet branches clinging to their legs.

  There was another crack of gunfire behind them and a searing splatter through the bushes to their right. Gabriel pushed Miss Flax behind a wide tree trunk and stepped beside her. He held his revolver up beside his face.

  “Where did that gun come from?” she whispered.

  He made a one-eyed glance round the tree trunk. “You sound put out. Oughtn’t you be relieved?”

  “Relieved? Relieved to be caught in the middle of some kind of Wild West shoot-out?”

  Gabriel strained his eyes for any hint of motion in the streaming shadows. “Better in the midst of a shoot-out than trembling like a doomed hare, don’t you think?”

  “You could’ve told me you were armed.”

  Gabriel spied the black forms of two men, dashing from tree trunk to tree trunk, several yards away.

  “Ghent’s guards,” he said.

  “What? I thought it was Herz, come back for a second helping. This is even worse. Let’s get out of here.” She turned.

  He turned her back round. “Don’t do anything impulsive. They’re watching for us. If you break into a run, I don’t doubt they’d shoot you in the back.”

  Just then, a bullet slammed his shoulder. He doubled forward, crouching in pain at the roots of the tree.

  * * *

  Ophelia gasped and dropped down beside him. “What happened?”

  “I’ve been shot.” His voice was taut with agony. “Hurry. They’re coming.” He was crawling into the dripping underbrush.

  “But—”

  “For God’s sake, no arguing this time!”

  Ophelia shut her mouth and crawled after him. They were inside a tangle of some kind of berry bushes. Thorns ripped her sleeves, and fallen branches pierced her knees.

  Deeper and deeper they went.

  Crawling through a thicket. In the Black Forest. How had she gotten here? She couldn’t exactly remember.

  After a few minutes of crawling, the brambles opened out again. Penrose stopped, touched his shoulder, and winced.

  “You’re bleeding!” Ophelia said. The shoulder of his jacket had a spreading dark stain.

  “Only a flesh wound.”

  “That’s a lot of blood.”

  He gazed out into the clearing. “Can you ride?”

  “Ride?” Was he delirious from his wound?

  “A horse.”

  She poked her head around his shoulder. Out in the clearing were two saddled horses tethered to a bush. “It’s too good to be true.”

  “They must belong to the guards.”

  “I don’t care who they belong to.” Ophelia was already scrambling to her feet.

  “I take it that means you know how to ride?”

  “Course I do.”

  They crept towards the horses.

  “Those aren’t ladies’ saddles,” Penrose said.

  “Never did like those silly contraptions.”

  The horses eyed them. One of them snorted.

  “Hi there, girl,” Ophelia said to the black horse. “Pretty girl.” She untied the bridle from the bush and mounted, throwing her leg over like a boy. The horse began to prance.

  “You American girls,” Penrose said, “are flush with talent.” He mounted, grimacing with pain.

  “Which way should we go?”

  “Back to the village. This way.” He rode towards the far edge of the clearing.

  Another gunshot rang out, just behind them. Ophelia’s horse whinnied and reared up. She struggled to keep her seat, leaning forward against the saddle horn. The horse took off.

  Everything was a blur of black branches and tree trunks as the horses streaked through the forest. Icy raindrops slashed her cheeks.

  Penrose was somewhere off to the side—she could hear his horse’s hoofbeats, the crashing brush.

  Then, with a sickening chill creeping over her, Ophelia realized that there were other hoofbeats, other crashing sounds, somewhere behind her.

  She stole a peep over her shoulder.

  She saw a horse charging up. The black outline of a man. A thumping big chin. A gun.

  That guard was going to kill her.

  Her horse was beginning to tire. Its flanks were hot and frothy, its motions less elastic.

  “Come on, girl,” she yelped, nudging the horse with her boot heels.

  It was now or never. Soon the guard would be too close for her to give him the slip.

  Ophelia had been a trick rider in her circus days. She and two other girls had paraded around in frilly pink tutus and satin slippers, standing on the backs of horses that had big bows around their necks. She’d never decided if all the applause had been for the balancing feat or for the view of the girls’ stems.

  She made her horse careen to the right. Up ahead, she spied a low-hanging branch. She pulled her feet from the stirrups and made her way to a crouch, still clinging to the saddle horn.

  As the horse neared the low-hanging branch, she stood shakily. Just before she lost her balance and pitched sideways, she grabbed the branch.

  The horse galloped away without her.

  Up ahead, beyond the retreating horse, Penrose rode by. He turned his head, saw her dangling from the branch. His face registered utter disbelief before he disappeared.

  Ophelia didn’t have time to laugh. Using her last fragments of energy, she managed to drag herself up into the crook of the tree. She clung to the wet trunk and held her breath as the guard raced past beneath her in pursuit of her horse.

  It had worked.

  Penrose could fend for himself.

  * * *

  Ophelia huddled in the tree, panting, for ten minutes or so before Penrose returned on foot. He held his bloodstained shoulder.

  He stopped at the base of her tree. “Are you quite all right up there, Miss Flax?”

  What a scream she must look, crouched in a tree in a three-piece suit. Like an organ grinder’s monkey.

  “Oh, yes, I’m fine.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

  “Good.”

  “And you? Your shoulder, I mean.”

  “I’ll survive.” He scratched his temple. “I won’t ask how you learned to leap from the back of a galloping horse into a tree, by the way. I’m under the distinct impression that such questions won’t get me anywhere.”

  “They won’t.”

  “Right. Well. If we can make it down to that streambed”—he pointed—“we might be able to t
ake shelter beneath the cliff on the opposite side before the guards find us again.”

  Ophelia squinted through the sheets of rain. She saw a long, jagged crack, half hidden by ferns, on the side of a cliff.

  She edged down the tree trunk. Thank the heavens she was wearing trousers.

  She made it to the bottom.

  He grinned.

  Her bushy eyebrows and both of her muttonchops had come unglued in the rain—she felt them dangling—and the greasepaint she’d applied to make herself middle-aged and manly was streaming down her face.

  She smeared it out of her eyes and followed Penrose down the slope, across the stream, and up a slippery bank. They entered the mouth of the cave.

  * * *

  Inside the cave, the rain was muted. It was dark and icebox cold, but at least it was dry. It smelled of earth and tree roots.

  Ophelia tore off her soaked bowler hat and wig, loosened the drenched cravat, and undid her top shirt button to get the wet fabric away from her throat. Her hair, which had been pinned up beneath her wig, tumbled down around her shoulders.

  Penrose was watching her.

  Wondering, probably, what he was doing in such close quarters with a clown.

  Her eyes adjusted to the dimness. The cave was widest at its mouth, and the rock ceiling sloped back to meet, somewhere in the shadows, the floor. There were a few pieces of rubble in the corners, sticks and leaves were scattered around, and—

  “What’s that?” She pointed to a shadowy lump.

  Penrose moved across the cave, crouched down. “A knapsack.”

  She joined him at his side and watched as he opened it. It was the sort of knapsack military men carried, made of canvas, with leather straps and brass buckles.

  Penrose pulled out a folded bundle.

  “Papers?” she said.

  He held the bundle up to the light seeping in from outside. “Maps.” He unfolded one. “Or, rather, a map in progress. It’s graphing paper, see? Someone has been charting territory. I used to do this myself, when I was in the cavalry.”

  Cavalry?

  Aha. That explained a bundle. Because even with his steamed-up spectacles and scholarly frown, Penrose didn’t look like a professor or an earl. Ophelia chalked it up to his broad shoulders. Or maybe it was the tattered, bloodstained jacket.

  At that moment, she realized how awfully alone they were in this secret cave. Her heart kicked up a notch. She drew away.

  It wasn’t fear. Not of him, anyway. She was frightened of herself, of this tugging towards him. She held her elbows.

  “This appears to be a chart of the terrain just about here,” Penrose said, still studying the map. “I see the stream”—he traced a fingertip along the paper—“and this very cave. No writing, however.”

  “Mm.”

  He glanced up. “Are you quite all right, Miss Flax?”

  “Oh, yes.” She forced a cheery smile.

  “But you’re shivering.” He folded the map and nestled it in the knapsack, but he didn’t buckle the straps. He stood.

  Ophelia swallowed. “I’m all right.”

  He moved closer.

  Ophelia glanced out the mouth of the cave. “Oh,” she said. “Is the rain letting up?”

  He didn’t look out.

  She felt rather than saw his presence: tall, dark, humming with life. He took another step closer. Then he was reaching up to her face.

  “Let me help you,” he said. His voice had gone rough.

  She gazed up into his face.

  He peeled her right muttonchop from her cheek, dropped it.

  Oh.

  A half smile curled his lips as he, very gently, removed the other muttonchop and both her bushy eyebrows, too. “That’s better,” he said. His eyes, behind his spectacles, held a lamp-like intensity.

  Ophelia’s lips parted in a breathless gesture she’d pretended hundreds of times onstage but that she’d never had need for in her real life.

  His hand went to her cravat and yanked it free.

  Her eyelids drooped. Her body, all on its own, drew closer to his chest.

  His face was coming closer. She saw the sandy texture of his jaw, his now serious-looking mouth.

  There was a flash of motion in the corner of her eye. She turned her head and saw the hulking silhouette of a man. She screamed.

  25

  “Hold your ground!” Penrose yelled. His hand was on his breast, over his revolver.

  The person held up his hands. “Smith here.”

  “Mr. Smith?” Ophelia said.

  Smith stepped into the cave, looking much smaller than he’d seemed at first. Water streamed from his deerstalker hat, and his shooting jacket was soaked. A rifle was slung across his back.

  “Out hunting?” Penrose said. He’d stepped away from Ophelia.

  “Got caught in this downpour.” Smith appeared to have tobacco in his cheek. His eyes fell on the knapsack. “Reckon I oughtn’t ask what the two of you are doing out here.”

  Ophelia’s cheeks smoldered as she fastened the top button of her shirt.

  “It would, perhaps,” Penrose said, “be a superfluous question.” He shifted so his bloodied shoulder was in shadow. “May I be so bold as to ask, why are you here?”

  “Birding. Castle’s a wretched place these days.” Smith moved to the knapsack, knelt beside it.

  Ophelia and Penrose exchanged a glance.

  The knapsack and the maps were his.

  “The place is filled with the despair of women.” Smith stuffed the maps into the knapsack. “Chews at a man’s soul like termites.” He tightened the straps with a jerk, buckled them. “I’ve spent most of my life in the out-of-doors. Wasn’t made for parlors and paperwork. But I did it for Homer. He was my greatest friend.” His face—at least in the dim light—appeared to crumple.

  “What will you do next?” Penrose said. “Now that Coop is gone.”

  “It’s back to Nevada for me, or California, maybe. Haven’t been out to the territories for more than a dozen years past. Lately I’ve been fired up with a longing for the wilderness—too much fancy food and piped-in hot water at that castle for my constitution.”

  “What about this forest—the Schwarzwald?” Penrose said. “Is it not at all like California?”

  “Like California? Haw! It’s about as much like California as one of them Arabian racehorses is like a Mexico donkey. Oh, that’s a hoot! No, one thing’s certain, and it’s that I’ve got to get myself back to some real wilderness. That durned policeman, Schubert, has forbidden us all to leave until he gets to the bottom of the murders, but I figure that’ll take about as much time as for him to learn to be a ballerina.”

  “Who,” Penrose said, “do you believe killed Coop?”

  Smith worked the plug of tobacco in his cheek. “Who did it? You want to know who did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell you who. That vixen Princess Verushka.”

  “Princess Verushka?” Penrose said. “But she only met Coop for the first time the day he was killed.”

  “That’s what I thought—that’s what everyone thought. But there’s something mighty strange about that one, mark my words.” Smith’s eyes suddenly flashed with malice. “You just take yourself down to Baden-Baden and have a squint at what’s she’s up to, flitting around in that there conversation-what’s-it.”

  “The Conversationshaus?”

  “That’s what I said. Go and have a look-see for yourself. She’s not who she says she is, that’s for dang sure.”

  “Not a princess?”

  “Oh, I reckon she’s a princess. But she ain’t a lady. I hear tell she’s taken up with the owner of that gambling joint. Rich as a king, they say he is. Bet that’d suit a little frippet like her just fine.”

  “Herr Ghent?” Oph
elia said.

  “Don’t know what his name is. All I know is, that princess has got rich fellers on the brain. And don’t you forget, Homer was real rich.” Smith glanced out the mouth of the cave. “Now look at that. Rain’s letting up.” He slung his knapsack over his shoulder. “Afternoon to you both. And don’t worry about me finding you two here. I know how young folks got to have their fun.” He winked, ducked out from under the rock ledge, and was gone.

  * * *

  “If Princess Verushka is Herr Ghent’s mistress—” Miss Flax said.

  Mistress. Gabriel frowned. Were proper young ladies acquainted with such terms?

  “—then she might’ve killed Mr. Coop. Maybe she’s somehow mixed up with, well, whatever Ghent and his thugs are doing.”

  “She was there when Coop died, true.”

  “She could’ve been sent to the castle to kill him and to ferret around in Coop’s study. She was also in the castle yesterday morning, calling on Mrs. Coop. When Karl died.”

  Miss Flax had knotted her loose hair and buttoned her shirt. The change did nothing to assuage Gabriel’s preposterous urge to drag her into his arms. Thank God Smith had shown up when he did. Gabriel had rather not have the sullied innocence of a maidservant on his conscience.

  Miss Flax was worrying her lower lip.

  Gabriel forced himself to look away—the sight was a bit much under the circumstances—as he said, “You’ve thought of something else.”

  “Yes, well, remember I told you about those laudanum drops Mrs. Coop has been guzzling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Princess Verushka has been in the castle”—she tipped her head, thinking—“yes, she’s been in the castle both times the new bottles of drops appeared.”

  “Are you suggesting—?”

  “What if Princess Verushka is the one who’s keeping Mrs. Coop in that state?”

  “I must go back to Baden-Baden and try to discover what Smith was referring to.” Gabriel looked out of the cave. The rain had indeed let up. “I think we ought to wait for a while here. Those guards could be searching for us still.”

  They settled down to wait inside the cave. Yellow sunbeams poured through the steamy greenery, and the birds gradually started twittering again.