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

  * * *

  “You’re going to town without me?” Prue whispered to Hansel out the tower window. The dregs of sunset lingered in the sky. “Now you’re confabulating with Ophelia and leaving me out of things? Hey! I suppose Ophelia gave you a stern lecture about how you ought to leave me behind? That it?”

  “Oh. I—well. . . .”

  “Come on! Throw me that key!” Prue struck her wistful Juliet pose in the tower window frame. Assuming Juliet ever had a pimple brewing on her left nostril.

  Hansel scratched his head. “Oh, all right.”

  * * *

  Prue and Hansel rumbled into Baden-Baden in a farmer’s hay cart that Hansel had borrowed. It was dragged by a mule. Between the rattletrap, the ugly brown dress, and the suspicion that her left nostril was starting to resemble a gumdrop, Prue felt like a yokel. At least her oily hair was neatly braided and covered with a kerchief.

  They clip-clopped through winding streets, weaving towards what Hansel said was the town center. The buildings got fancier, and there was more hustle and bustle, more light and music spilling out of hotels and restaurants. Then they turned up a steep street. It was strung with grand stone villas that were surrounded by lush trees and spiked walls. Light beamed from their tall windows. Piano music and the scent of honeysuckle drifted on the air.

  “Here it is,” Hansel said presently. “The sanatorium.”

  They had turned a corner. A large ivory building, a mix of grand hotel and hospital, nestled back against the hillside. All the windows were lit up, pooling gaslight on the circular front drive. The drive was lined with crisp trimmed shrubbery. Grecian urns of roses flanked the double doors at the top of wide steps.

  Hansel stopped the cart.

  “Now what?” Prue said.

  “I had supposed we would sneak in through the back somewhere. Attired in this fashion, no one will believe we are visitors. This is a costly sanatorium.”

  “How about we take a look through the windows and size things up?”

  They left the mule and cart on the shadowy side of the street. Prue hoped some prince wouldn’t look out the window of his villa and notice it. They slunk around the side of the sanatorium and burrowed through a boxwood hedge to a lit-up window. They peeked through.

  A dining room. All filled with pale, trembly ladies and gents hunched over bowls of soup.

  “Isn’t this a late suppertime for sickies?” Prue whispered.

  “They are wealthy. Perhaps they wish to keep up their aristocratic routines.”

  They did look rich, despite all the crunched-over spines and dribbling soup. Their clothes weren’t festive, but there was a lot of sheened black silk and elegant cashmere wraps. And all their consumptive hacking was directed into hankies of delicate linen and lace.

  Waiters sprinted around on the Turkish carpet, refilling water glasses and picking up soup spoons dropped by quivering fingers.

  “Must be horrible, having consumption,” Prue said. “I just can’t picture Miss Gertie here.”

  They watched for about half an hour. Prue had been ravenous during the ride in the hay cart. But the sight of this bunch was enough to put her off her feed for a week.

  “There she is.” Hansel prodded a fingertip against the windowpane.

  “That’s her all right.”

  Miss Gertie posed like one of those Viking ladies at the opera, all blond braids and magnificent bosom, in an arched doorway at the far end of the dining room. All that was missing was one of those helmets with horns. She gripped the handles of a wicker wheelchair, which was occupied by what appeared to be a heap of black wool with a white wig.

  “That’s why Miss Gertie is staying here at the sanatorium,” Prue said. “She’s a nurse or companion to that shrively old lady.”

  Gertie wheeled the old lady to a table and arranged everything just so before seating herself.

  “She was not lying, then,” Hansel said. He turned and slid down from the window into a crouch, leaning against the foundation stones. “She truly is staying here.”

  Prue slid down next to him. “I still think she’s mighty suspicious. So will Ophelia, I’d wager. Hey!” She elbowed Hansel. “Seeing as she’s occupied with dinner, why don’t we sneak into her room? Maybe we’ll find that notebook she was scribbling in.”

  “Now?”

  “Sure.”

  “How? Besides, if we were caught, they would summon the police. You are an escaped prisoner.”

  “You’re making me sound like a criminal.”

  “I do not wish for you to be taken to the jail here in town. There are rough people there.”

  “All the more reason to get to the bottom of what Miss Gertie is doing with her spying.”

  Hansel thought about it. “That makes sense,” he said at last.

  They elbowed out of the boxwood and circled around to the back of the sanatorium. They approached what seemed like a workers’ door. As they drew closer, they saw the door led to a bustling kitchen, jam-packed with waiters and cooks.

  “We’ll be about as sneaky as a brass band in a funeral parlor if we go in there,” Prue said.

  Just then, the kitchen door burst open and a dough-faced man in white cook’s coat emerged. He brandished a whopping knife.

  Prue and Hansel stepped backwards.

  The cook yelled something to Hansel, swinging the knife in a way that Prue wouldn’t have called hospitable.

  Hansel said nothing. He just grabbed Prue’s hand, and they piked off.

  “What did he say?” Prue panted, once they had reached the hay cart.

  “He called us beggars and said that we should go to the soup kitchens if we were hungry.” Hansel helped her up into the seat. “Or he would send for the police.”

  * * *

  Hansel did something odd as they creaked their way back through the streets of Baden-Baden in the hay cart.

  It happened when they passed by a shop. Prue couldn’t read the German sign, but it had the look of a pawnbroker’s shop. There was an accordion in the window and a pair of high-heeled shoes with jeweled buckles, a bone fan, oil paintings and enameled snuffboxes, a revolver in a pink satin-lined case, and a whole set of silver cutlery.

  Prue knew a pawnbroker’s shop when she saw one. Ma had squeaked them through the lean times, between benefactors, by selling off jewelry, fancy clothes, and furniture that she’d been given by some gentleman or other in the first flush of his ardor. Which, Prue knew, never lasted. Just like a pastry, you had to make the most of a man’s lovesickness when it was fresh and hot.

  Well, when they rolled by the pawnbroker’s shop, Hansel slowed the mule to a crawl. He stared into the display window like he was searching for something. His expression was sort of yearning and bleak all at once. His eyes landed on something—Prue thought it was maybe one of the snuffboxes, one with a gold lid—and his cheeks went red. Then he urged the mule faster.

  “Looks like you saw a ghost in that window back there,” Prue said.

  “You might say that.” Hansel’s voice was a growl. Sort of like a wounded dog.

  Maybe it was better not to talk.

  A few moments later, someone called, “Hansel.”

  They were trying to get through a clog of pedestrians and carriages in front of a drinking establishment. Traffic had stalled. Coarse laughter and clanking beer glasses sailed out on a tide of tobacco smoke and stinky whale-oil lamp fumes.

  Hansel’s shoulders hitched and something—what? Pain? Anger?—washed over his features. Whatever it was, he recognized the voice. He turned.

  “Good evening, Franz,” he said.

  Franz. Why did that name ring a bell?

  Franz was a handsome young man—in a smallish, dark, dapper sort of way—standing on the busy sidewalk. He reminded Prue of a magician. Or maybe an otter. He was about twenty, trim in a black s
wallowtail coat and crisp white shirt. His black silk stovepipe hat tilted at a rakish angle, and his tie was undone.

  Liquored up. No doubt about it.

  “Good evening,” Franz said to Hansel. He stepped into the street, close to the hay cart. “Are we speaking English on account of that pretty little thing?”

  Prue tilted her chin and gazed past his shoulder. Although it was a relief to learn that two days in the tower hadn’t completely spoiled her looks.

  Hansel introduced Prue as his American cousin, Lottie.

  Franz—his last name was Lind—sidled even closer. “I had no notion”—he snatched up Prue’s hand and kissed it—“that you had a beautiful little American cousin hidden away somewhere. How positively modern of you.” His accented voice was custard smooth.

  “Yes, well,” Hansel said. “Second cousin, actually. She is here paying a visit.”

  “Well, Hansel, my man, what are you doing in town?”

  “An errand. For the castle mistress.”

  A smile spread over Franz’s face. “Oh? Keeps you busy, does she?”

  Why was this was such a mirthful topic of conversation for Franz? And such a sore one for Hansel?

  “And you, Franz?” Hansel inspected Franz’s fancy duds. “Are you still employed as a croupier in the gaming rooms?”

  Something dark flickered across Franz’s face. “No. I am a student now at Heidelberg.”

  Hansel tensed.

  Something weird was going on between these two.

  “Come into the inn here, and have a drink with me,” Franz said. “Surely the mistress of the castle does not have you on such a short leash.”

  Prue noticed that Hansel’s fists were clenched around the mule reins. But he said, “All right.”

  16

  Hansel helped Prue down from the cart and left the mule under the supervision of a small boy. They entered the stuffy, smoky inn. They found an empty table, and Franz wiggled his fingers for the barmaid.

  As they sank into their rough wood chairs, Franz flipped his evening coat so as not to squash his swallowtail. Prue glimpsed a bit of ribbon folded over his belt at his hip. A ribbon striped red, black, and white.

  Prue considered herself an authority on fashion. Ladies’ fashions, mostly, but she knew plenty about gents’, too. Ma had subscribed to Godey’s Lady’s Book, Le Salon de la Mode, and Peterson’s Magazine, and Prue had learned the alphabet on their fashion plates. Yet she had never seen anyone wear a bit of colored ribbon over their belt like that.

  “If you are studying at Heidelberg, what brings you to Baden-Baden?” Hansel said to Franz, once they had three glasses of beer before them.

  “I do, of course, make my home in Heidelberg now. But Baden-Baden has its allures.”

  Hansel stared at him coolly over the edge of his beer glass. “You have been gambling.”

  Franz shrugged. “This, that, and the other, as they say.” He swigged his beer. His movements were loose and jerky, like he’d been drinking for hours.

  “Is that,” Hansel said, leaning forward, “how you are paying for university? And for these fine clothes? With winnings from the gaming rooms?”

  Franz ignored the question. “What I would like to hear about is the murder at Schloss Grunewald. It has been plastered all over the newspapers and on every serving wench’s wagging tongue.”

  Hansel and Prue described what they knew, leaving out the tidbits about Miss Gertie. Oh, and the fact that Prue was not really Hansel’s American cousin Lottie, but the accused murderess herself.

  “The objects from the cottage were taken?” Franz repeated, when they got to that part. He lurched forward, sloshing his beer. “Even the skeleton?”

  “Even the skeleton,” Hansel said. He leaned in, lowered his voice. “Do you remember, when we were boys, finding that small bone up on the cliff? With my dog?”

  That’s where Prue had heard about Franz. That story.

  “Of course,” Franz said. “That little bone gave me nightmares for years. I was frightened that it belonged to a diabolical elf hiding under my bed.”

  “It was a dwarf’s bone,” Prue blurted. “Snow White’s dwarf.”

  Hansel bugged his eyes at her.

  Crackers. Was she not supposed to have said that?

  “A dwarf’s bone!” Franz reached over and chucked Prue’s chin. “Fancy that.”

  She recoiled.

  “Do you mean to suggest,” Franz said, “that the skeleton in that cottage was dug up from the place where we found that bone when we were boys?”

  “Yes,” Hansel said. He seemed reluctant to fess up to it.

  “How fascinating.” Franz’s eyes glittered.

  He wasn’t really drunk. Prue saw it now. He was playacting.

  What if some of those boot prints in the dirt, up at the cliff gravesite, had been Franz’s? That would give him something to hide.

  “Listen here, Lottie.” Franz scooted his chair next to hers and put his mouth so close she felt his moist breath on her earlobe. “What say you about having a bit of fun while you are here on your visit? I am told you American chits are game for a laugh.”

  “Now see here,” Hansel said, his voice hot.

  “There is,” Franz went on, ignoring Hansel’s warning and Prue’s wrinkled nose, “a masquerade ball here in Baden-Baden tomorrow evening. Fairy tale costumes. Meet me there, and I shall give you an evening you shall never forget.”

  “Never.” Prue scooted her chair away.

  “No? Not even if I said that I know who you really are?”

  Prue’s eyes flew to Hansel. He looked like he’d just tippled an entire bottle of cod liver oil.

  “You are that murderess,” Franz said. “Not cousin Lottie.”

  “I’m not a murderess. That’s slander.”

  “Oh, no? Then prove it. Say you shall meet me at the ball tomorrow evening.”

  Prue narrowed her eyes. “That’s blackmail.”

  “Is that what it is called?” Franz stood and slapped a few coins on the tabletop. “I would be curious to hear how the police would characterize it.” He smiled down at her, revealing too-small teeth and red gums.

  Prue suppressed a shudder. “Fine.” She’d go to the ball with him all right. And she’d squeeze his secrets out of him like she was a juicer and he was the last lemon in the world.

  But one thing was firm: Prue couldn’t breathe a word of Franz or the ball to Ophelia. If Ophelia knew about Franz, she’d sniff out the risks. She’d put her foot down about Prue taking any more sneak-outs. She’d have reason to look slantwise at Hansel, too.

  Prue didn’t give a fig about risks, though. There was no way in creation she was going to miss going on Hansel’s arm to that fairy tale ball.

  * * *

  “So, Miss Gertie Darling wasn’t fibbing,” Prue said, summing up her excursion to Baden-Baden to Ophelia through the keyhole. “She ain’t an invalid, but she is staying at the sanatorium.”

  Ophelia nodded, crouched in the cold shadows outside the tower door. What a relief. This would put an end to Prue’s excursions. “I reckon she had nothing to do with it. A dead end. Which means, Prue, you should sit tight in the tower from now on.”

  Dead silence on the other side of the door.

  “Prue?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Prue said. “I’ll sit tight till the cows come home.”

  Ophelia stood and headed back towards the main castle. Why did she have the suspicion that Prue was holding something back?

  * * *

  Directly after breakfast the next morning, Gabriel walked up to Schloss Grunewald. The funeral was scheduled for later, Gabriel had heard, and he had no wish to attend. But the gardener boy, Hansel, had never replied to his note, and Gabriel desired to investigate the gravesite on the cliff with such fierceness his every muscle was
taut.

  Gabriel discovered Hansel hoeing a long, lush row of beans in the kitchen gardens.

  “Hello there, lad,” Gabriel said.

  Hansel froze and turned. “Professor Penrose, is it not? You sent that note.”

  “Yes. I won’t beat around the bush, Hansel. I see you’ve work to do. Miss Flax apprised me of the existence—the possible existence—of a gravesite on a cliff in the woods about here. Of your suspicion that the skeleton found in the cottage was, in fact, dug up from that cliff.”

  Hansel leaned on his hoe. His expression was pleasant yet closed. “Yes.”

  “Would you tell me how I might reach that cliff? I wish to examine it myself.”

  Hansel shrugged. “Very well.” He gave Gabriel directions, starting from the bottom of the orchard.

  “Seems simple enough,” Gabriel said. “I am most obliged.”

  “No trouble,” Hansel said, hoisting his hoe. “No trouble at all.”

  * * *

  Homer T. Coop’s funeral was held in Schloss Grunewald’s dim, vaulted chapel. Reddish light bled through the stained-glass windows, and the tapers on the altar sputtered. Spiders scurried across the flagstone floor.

  Ophelia’s skin crawled as she watched yet another eight-legged mite dart behind a hymnal. What a pity Inspector Schubert wasn’t here to frolic with his kin.

  She sat with the other servants and Mr. Smith in a rear pew.

  In the pulpit, a robed priest with a big sniffer and hooded eyes droned on in Latin.

  Mr. Coop had not, as far as Ophelia knew, been a pious man. He probably would’ve never guessed his funeral would be conducted by a German Catholic priest, or that he’d be laid to rest in the ancestral crypt of a fizzled-out aristocratic family. But Mrs. Coop had insisted on these arrangements. It seemed she was bent on staying in the castle indefinitely, now that her husband’s business ventures would no longer require her to return home.

  But Ophelia wasn’t paying much attention to the funeral mass. When she wasn’t dodging spiders, she was watching the back of Mr. Hunt, who sat between Mrs. Coop and Amaryllis in the first pew.

  If Mr. Hunt had killed Mr. Coop, and if he planned to kill Mrs. Coop next and then marry Amaryllis for her money, there had to be some sign of it.