Castle Shade

by Laurie R. King

  The men who had poured past us were more or less oblivious to our presence, but here we were seized upon by the women, who demanded information, reassurance, and most of all, instruction.

  I pulled myself up to my full height and held up one placating hand. They subsided. “As you all no doubt know, Gabriela…I’m sorry, what is her last name?”

  “Stoica,” said a chorus of voices, showing me which of my audience understood English.

  “Thank you. Miss Stoica seems to have disappeared on her way home. The little gold cross she wears was found on the road near her house.” I took care to use the present tense, and waited until the murmur of translation died away. “Her family is there. The Queen’s men are out looking for her. The police have been called from Brașov. I am sure all the village will join the search. You might want to have food and drink when they return.”

  This time, the translation was done on the move, as the gathering of women moved as one in the direction of the kitchen. I caught back one of them who had understood my words.

  “We need to speak with the Queen. Would you take us, please?”

  We followed her across and up to the Queen’s rooms. She slipped inside, but was back in moments to show us in. We found the Queen fully dressed, regal and in control. In front of her was a cup of tea. It was three o’clock in the morning.

  I eyed the tray longingly, and suggested to the woman that coffee would be a lovely thing, once the kitchen had some brewing.

  The moment the door shut, the Queen’s assured posture went stiff, her icy blue eyes locking on Holmes. “What is going on here? I wake to find the castle in turmoil and one of the girls gone missing. Is this in any way connected to why I brought you here?”

  Holmes, pulling out a chair to indicate that the reply was going to be a long one, started things off. “Ma’am, since you returned to the vicinity on Thursday, beginning the night you were in Sinaia, Russell and I have been witness to a series of events designed to slander Your Majesty’s reputation. They are—”

  “What events? Why have you not kept me informed?”

  “Madam, it requires a series to shape a pattern, and at the beginning we did not have that. Later, we did not think you would wish to discuss matters in front of your daughter.”

  “You should have come to me. That is why I hired you.”

  The idea of Sherlock Holmes as a hireling raised an eyebrow. “Madam, I can either investigate, or I can deliver reports. I was under the impression that you wanted a rapid solution to the case, rather than ongoing chapters to a story.”

  A lesser man would have grovelled, or perhaps melted down, under the force of her gaze—but Sherlock Holmes had turned that mildly amused face on kings, marshals, and imperial governors. It worked as well on this imperious woman as it had on every person I’d ever seen, with the possible exception of Mrs Hudson.

  The Queen reached for her cup, and when she had given it an unnecessary stir, her outrage had been packed away.

  He nodded, and explained that we had found indications that someone wanted to stoke rumours that the Queen of Roumania was engaging in unsavoury acts.

  “ ‘Unsavoury acts’?” she said sharply. “Of what sort?”

  “You know of the Countess Erzabet Báthory?”

  The Queen’s face went pale. Clearly she had heard of the woman—and I was glad that Holmes did not have to go into details, particularly regarding the episode of the kitchen maid’s cut and the suggestive bowl of blood. This proud English aristocrat did not need to dwell on the idea that her people might believe her capable of bathing her skin in a virgin’s blood.

  “Yes,” he said, “along those lines, although it would appear that here, your would-be antagonist is willing to seize on any convenient sin, from witchcraft to summoning the dead to having vampiric tendencies.”

  She blinked. I knew how she felt.

  “I say ‘would-be’ because in at least two of these episodes, Russell and I have intervened before the damning evidence could come to light.”

  The coffee arrived, and with it a platter of hastily made but hearty sandwiches, equally welcome. The Queen took the opportunity to ask how the castle was faring, and asked her maid to convey her thanks to the kitchen, and assure them that they would hear any news as soon as the Queen did.

  We waited until the door was closed before resuming.

  “The first item appeared to be a witch’s hex bag.”

  “That’s a little bag containing herbs and talismans,” I explained. “that witches are said to use when laying a curse.”

  “It was left at the door to a chicken coop,” Holmes continued, “with a scoop of poisoned grain. Had the farmer let his hens out as usual, they’d have died. The hex bag would have pointed to a witch—and, more specifically, to you.”

  “How?”

  “The herbs this one contained were Earl Grey tea.”

  She did not quite laugh, not with a missing girl at the fore of everyone’s mind, but the impulse was clear. Instead, she waved for him to go on.

  “We then took a walk up into the hills to consult with an old witch-woman I came across there.”

  “Mrs Varga?”

  “You know her?”

  “I ride all over these hills, so naturally I’ve met her. An odd woman, but harmless.”

  I hoped she was right. I could not help remembering some of the old woman’s herbs, drying against her front door.

  “Mrs Varga agreed that the bag was a sham, not something a real witch might have made.”

  “Aimed, as you say, at creating rumours. Why did it not do so?”

  Holmes glanced over at me. “Because a sleepless young woman noticed movement in the night. Then her husband followed some foot-prints to the chickens.”

  “How fortunate.”

  “Indeed.”

  I picked up the story from there. “Then the next night, when you returned, one of the kitchen maids spoke to a dead man as she went home after dark. He claimed to be a local soldier, who was killed in the War. That of course was a long time before you came here, although he has family in the village and was one of Mr Florescu’s young protégées.”

  “I believe this was one bit of gossip that did reach village ears,” she said.

  “It did.”

  “But what does any of it have to do with me? Ghosts, witches. The ‘Blood Countess.’ ”

  “We haven’t yet figured that out,” I admitted. “Logic suggests it will be tied to you somehow, but we haven’t yet seen how, in anything but the most general of ways.”

  “I trust this invisible adversary is not about to build a case that the soldier was my secret lover,” she said in a dry voice. “I am credited with rather too many of those as it is.”

  “Um, well, no. Not that I’m aware. But since the boy was only sixteen, and he died four years before you came here, that would be a difficult claim to establish.”

  “Mildly reassuring,” she murmured.

  Holmes took us back on track. “Now, however, we have the disappearance of a young woman who has worked for you for some years. Madam, may we examine that pearl necklace you often wear?”

  “My pearls? Certainly, though I do not know what they have to do with matters.”

  She went out, returning a few minutes later with a sumptuous double-handful of lustrous balls. “I don’t often bring my real jewels to Bran,” she noted. “Both because I rarely hold formal parties here, but also because I prefer this place to be free of ceremony. Pearls are quite enough, for the most part.”

  Holmes and I did not remark that these un-real jewels would pay for a very nice house in London. Instead, he laid them out on the table, close enough together that their marked similarity was displayed. When he sat back, I took out the pearl I had found on the ground and set it beside them.

  It was du
ller, less perfect in shape, and though large in itself, decidedly smaller than any other one on the table.

  “I found that a few feet away from Gabriela’s necklace,” I told her.

  She did not protest, did not point out that it was nothing like hers. She did not need to. All three of us could see that, if a villager had found it first, any proof would have been as effective as a small boulder against a raging torrent.

  A knock came at the door. I snatched up the stray pearl and Marie swept away the ropes, settling everything under our garments as the maid stepped in with a bob.

  “Ma’am, there is a policeman here to see you. Inspector Dragomir? He says Mr Florescu sent for him.”

  “Yes, thank you, Christina, bring him up.” When the door had closed, she turned to us. “Will you stay? To help me decide how much Mr Dragomir needs to know about all…this?”

  “We would be happy to,” Holmes lied.

  Personally, I was interested to see what a Transylvanian police inspector would look like. In fact…“Would you prefer that Holmes and I speak to him? Give him some of the same information we’ve given you?”

  “Some of it?”

  “Nothing personal, nothing touching on your daughter. But a plot against you, from within the village? It is a thing he should be aware of, as he organises the search for Gabriela.”

  “I suppose you are right. And I have met this policeman, once or twice. He seemed to me a responsible sort, not like some. I have known policemen to sell information to the gossip papers, if you can believe that.”

  We shook our heads at the sad decline of common decency, and went to divert the inspector from Brașov.

  In my pocket—barely—was the Queen’s pearl necklace.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Inspector Dragomir was a small, nondescript man in his fifties with excellent manners and fluid English. Beneath his inexpensive suit was the body of a man who went for strolls over mountains, and above his starched collar was a noncommittal mouth and a pair of black eyes that had seen everything, and been surprised by nothing.

  Although the two of us were not what he had been expecting. His gaze passed over me and stopped on Holmes. “I was asked to see Her Majesty.”

  “She sent us to see you first. We have information that you may need.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We are private detectives, hired by Queen Marie to look into a series of incidents that may or may not be related to the disappearance of Gabriela Stoica.”

  “Private detective?”

  Holmes extended his hand. “My name is Holmes. This is my wife.”

  Often, especially with those for whom English was not a native tongue, the surname did not rouse any attention, even if it was coupled with the description of private detective. Dragomir, however, paused over the name as if it had been prefaced by Sherlock. I saw him waver, then decide not to ask. Instead, he pointed out that his men were waiting for him.

  Holmes assured him that it would not take long, and indicated the chairs in the small reception room adjacent to the Queen’s quarters. Dragomir shrugged, but illustrated his impatience by perching on the very edge of his chair.

  “Inspector, before we begin, I need to eliminate one possibility in this situation. Have you had other women disappear, in the area? Other attacks, other—”

  “No! This is a quiet place. We have no…predators.”

  His use of the word showed that he well knew what Holmes meant.

  “Would you have heard, if there was one in the wider areas—Cluj, Sinaia, Bucharest, perhaps?”

  “I would know.”

  I watched Holmes, waiting for his decision. Honesty is a risk, and we had promised not to betray the Queen’s secrets. But at a certain point, one must choose between trusting a man of obvious intelligence, and crippling him with inadequate knowledge.

  In any case, we needed an impartial witness to the pearl.

  Holmes nodded, as if I had spoken aloud. “Russell, I believe the Inspector needs to see our evidence. Will you show him the pearl? I shall go and fetch the hex bag.”

  At the final term, Dragomir started to speak, but Holmes waved him off. “Inspector, in the interests of time, listen to my wife first, then I will show you our other evidence. After that, we will fill you in on as much of the background as you need to know.”

  A somewhat ambiguous promise. But perhaps the man’s English was not quite up to that degree of subtlety, because he merely watched Holmes leave, then turned to me.

  “My husband and I have been trying to solve a number of nighttime disturbances by standing watch in the village, hoping to catch the person responsible. Tonight, around midnight, we saw a man come up the road to the castle. It turned out to be the father of Gabriela Stoica, one of the kitchen maids. He was worried because she had not come home when she left work, around seven o’clock. We knew approximately where she lived, and we went up that road looking for indications that she was abducted. And we did that,” I interrupted, as he’d been about to ask me why on earth we might jump to that conclusion, “because I myself was attacked some twenty-four hours earlier. I was knocked out with chloroform, put into a root cellar in the town, and left there to find my way out. However, I am an English citizen and a guest of the Queen. Either he knew who I was and arranged matters so I would be free as soon as I woke, or he took the first woman available, then realised who I was and decided that kidnapping me would create an enormous problem.

  “Gabriela Stoica, on the other hand, is a maid and the daughter of a farmer. That the Royal Princess is fond of her may be her only claim to influence. But because she works in Castle Bran, and because it is clear that Queen Marie is familiar with her, she made for an ideal target. And this is why.”

  I had to stand up to work the pearls out of my pocket. I stretched them out on the table and sat. “We came here to investigate a threatening letter, aimed against the Princess Ileana. What we found, however, is a wider threat against the Queen herself. Not physical harm, but an attempt to tie her name with some troublesome, even despicable acts. That is why I’d like you to compare those pearls to this one.”

  I placed it in front of Dragomir. He admired it, then looked down at the string composed of dozens of similar examples. “They look the same from a distance, don’t they? Anyone who had seen the Queen’s necklace, which she wears all the time, then found that single pearl on the ground, would connect the two. Do you agree?” He gestured his acceptance. “Well, that pearl was on the road four feet away from a little gold crucifix necklace belonging to Gabriela Stoica.”

  His eyes snapped up. I nodded. “It is possible that there are two purposes in the necklace being left there. Primarily, it is something known to be Gabi’s. But second, it is a cross. A holy object said to be offensive to the demonic and even the corrupt and sinful.”

  I could see this straining his understanding, and waved it aside.

  “In any event, even without the cross, we believe the pearl was intended to create a picture, of the Queen’s necklace breaking in a struggle, letting this one roll away, unnoticed. Anyone finding it would think it odd, then think it suspicious, then begin to remember all kinds of strange and sinister events and rumours about the woman who had come to live in the castle. Except that I was the one to find it, not a villager. And I took it away before anyone saw it.

  “The reason we are giving you that pearl, Inspector, is for you to examine it and the necklace itself, and judge if the one could possibly have come from the other.”

  Holmes had returned during my explanation. He now held out his pocket magnifying glass, and pulled the candelabra closer to the table. Dragomir started the way we had, by laying the pearl beside the others, then moving it here and there to see if other pearls on the string were a match in size or colour. He then took up the rope and the magnifying glass and worked his way methodically alo
ng it, looking for any signs of recent re-stringing or repair. He found what we had found: the silk thread was uniform, and all along it were tiny frays that betrayed many hours of wear.

  Eventually, he let the long rope spool down to the table, and nodded.

  “Inspector,” Holmes said, “if you hear any trace of a rumour that a pearl was found at the scene of Miss Stoica’s abduction, would you be so good as to let us know? And—would you be prepared to step on it immediately? If anything…permanent has happened to Gabi Stoica, this is the kind of talk that would fester beneath the Queen’s name.”

  “I don’t know that I could use that pearl as evidence,” he said. “It is your word alone that it was found there.”

  “I couldn’t very well leave it there for all to see,” I protested.

  “I understand. But still.”

  Holmes stepped in. “Inspector, its strength as evidence matters less than our wish to convince you. If you hear talk of the Queen being responsible in any way for that girl’s disappearance, remember it. And this as well.”

  He showed Dragomir the hex bag, describing when and where it had been found. He explained that we had other pieces of evidence, from the plaster shoe-casts to the torch with its possible prints. “But none of those will help you find Miss Stoica, and that should be of primary concern now.”

  “Do you have anything else to tell me?” he asked.

  “Nothing that should keep you from your investigation.”

  Dragomir took note of the evasive reply, but either he could tell that pushing would have no effect, or he did not want to waste any more time with us. In any event, our gamble, which had rested on a policeman with brains and integrity, appeared to have paid off.

  Holmes and I watched him go, our worry about Gabi lightened somewhat, or at least shared.