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

  They didn’t speak. Gabriel didn’t trust himself to. And he could tell Miss Flax was embarrassed by their encounter. As well she ought to be. He’d been a cad.

  * * *

  Prue and Hansel marched a long while down Heidelberg’s main street. They arrived, presently, in a big market square. The rain was splatting down harder, and the market vendors were packing up their carts and stands. Vegetable scraps littered the paving stones. An enormous funny-shaped church, like a big loaf pan, loomed over the square.

  Prue tipped her neck to see the top of the steeple. It looked like a jumbo black handbell.

  “The Church of the Holy Spirit,” Hansel said. He shoved the brim of his cap down to keep the rain out of his eyes.

  “Where Snow White’s buried?”

  “Perhaps.”

  That feeling of being followed clung to Prue all across the market square and into the church.

  Inside, it was cool and dim, but dry. It smelled of burned beeswax and spicy incense. The ceiling was sky-high and obscured by shadows. A few figures in black knelt in pews way up by the altar, but the church was mostly empty.

  She and Hansel poked around the edges of the sanctuary, searching for the entrance to the crypts, trickling rainwater behind them. They found the choir robe closet, confessional booths behind curtains, a broom cupboard, and what looked to be the organist’s secret supply of schnapps. But no crypts.

  The whole time, that sense of being watched stuck around.

  Hansel dragged open a big, iron-girded door that they’d discovered in a chamber behind the baptismal font. “Ah,” he said.

  Prue joined him. Candles in black iron holders lit a shuddering path down the stairs. Looked like the entrance to Fire and Brimstone Town. “Maybe I’ll keep watch up here,” Prue said. “Make sure no one follows you.”

  “I may need your help.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Moving sarcophagus lids.”

  Sweet sister Sally.

  “Do you even know her real name?” Prue said. “Snow White’s, I mean? Because surely that ain’t written on her tombstone.”

  “I do not. However, last night I examined a history of the region, taken from my—from the castle library. I believe I know the name of the man Snow White possibly wed.”

  “Her prince?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  The crypt was bone-cold, but not smelly and slimy like Prue had feared. It was filled with stone coffins with chiseled human figures lying on their lids.

  She hung close to Hansel as he inspected the coffins, one by one, holding the candle that he’d brought down. Each coffin had a name carved in its lid. Hansel’s eyes were eager, his mouth rigid, as he searched.

  Prue eyed the staircase, half expecting the door at the top to slam shut. She was sure she heard mouse squeaks somewhere.

  “Look at this,” Hansel said, after going over about a dozen coffins. He rubbed at the carved letters with his cuff. Cobwebs balled up. “This is the sarcophagus I was searching for.”

  Prue sidestepped some mouse dribbles. “Snow White’s old man?” The carved figure on the lid was a bearded fellow in robes, holding a sword.

  “Perhaps. Kunibert Odovacar. The third son of one of the electors palatine in the fifteenth century. He is the youngest son of an elector palatine in that era, so I deduced it was he that Snow White married.” Hansel checked the name on the coffin next to Kunibert’s. “But there is no wife buried beside him.”

  “No Snow White.” Prue had reckoned it would be simple: they’d go to the crypts and find a coded message explaining who was the murderer and why, and then all their problems would be solved. Her shoulders sagged. “What’ll we do next?”

  “Yes,” someone said behind them, “what will you do? First a railway journey to Heidelberg, then an antiquarian expedition in a crypt—what next? A sojourn to the moon?”

  Prue and Hansel whirled around.

  “Franz,” Hansel said.

  She knew it. “You been following us since the train station?”

  Franz removed his bowler hat and flicked raindrops off of it. “Ever since I saw you on the platform in Baden-Baden.”

  “Following us.” Hansel said. “Why?”

  Franz shrugged. “Boredom. Mind you, I was returning to Heidelberg anyway. When I saw an escaped convict and a castle gardener out for a secret gallivant, perhaps my curiosity got the better of me.”

  “You will not,” Hansel said, “tell anyone you saw Miss Bright out, will you?”

  “I have never seen her anywhere but out.” Franz’s eyes fell on the coffin behind them. “What is more intriguing than an escaped murderess is that you claim to have located the tomb of Snow White’s prince. Perhaps, Hansel, completing your university education would do you a world of good. Believing in fairy stories! Tsk, tsk.”

  Hansel scowled.

  “Why,” Franz went on, “are you attempting to find the tomb of a lesser character from the murk of mythology? Do tell. I find the beliefs of servants so fascinating. Perhaps it is a notion gleaned from your wretched grandmother?”

  “See here, Franz,” Prue said. She felt hot, despite the crypt’s clammy air. “There’s no need to be so stuck-up about Hansel just because he’s come down in the world. He’s finer and grander than you’ll ever be, and matter of fact, his pa wrote him a letter that said everything’s going to go back to the way it used to be, just as soon as we figure out where Snow White is buried.”

  Hansel winced.

  Crackers. Was that letter supposed to be a secret?

  Franz wormed closer, around a couple coffins. He moistened his skinny lips. “There is something buried with Snow White?”

  “Not necessarily,” Hansel said. He picked up the candle.

  Franz edged still closer. His shoes crunched on the gritty floor. “I do not believe you.” He leaned around Hansel and read the inscription on the coffin lid. “Kunibert Odovacar. Your fairy tale prince, I presume?” He snickered. “Come, dear Hansel. You need a drink. Join me at the beer hall, and we shall show your sweet little murderess a splendid time. And you”—he reached out and straightened the placket of Hansel’s homespun jacket—“shall tell me all about that letter.”

  Hansel and Prue exchanged a glance.

  “We do need to eat,” Hansel said, “but there is nothing more to say about the letter.” He pushed Franz’s fingers away from his jacket and led the way out of the crypts.

  * * *

  After an hour of waiting inside the cave, Gabriel and Miss Flax made their way back through the forest without seeing a soul. When Gabriel left her at the foot of the orchard slope, he passed her his revolver.

  She stared down at it, and then up at his bloodied shoulder.

  “You may require it,” he said.

  “I don’t know how to use it.”

  “No? You know how to do so many other things.”

  She frowned.

  He took the gun. “It’s loaded. Six bullets. You need only cock it—like this—”

  She winced.

  “—and pull the trigger. After a shot, hold up the gun, like so, when you cock it again, to allow the spent caps to fall out.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “Those guards meant to kill us.”

  She set her lips, took the gun, and slipped it into her trousers pocket in silence. She started up the slope.

  “And Miss Flax.”

  She turned.

  “Be careful.”

  * * *

  When Gabriel returned to the inn, bone-tired and soaking wet, Winkler was ensconced before the sitting room fire with a newspaper, some kind of steaming drink, and a plate piled high with biscuits.

  Gabriel tried to slip past the open sitting room door unseen. He intended to go directly up to his chamber, pee
l off his wet clothes, pour himself a large brandy, and see to his shoulder.

  “Penrose,” Winkler called.

  Hang it.

  “Good evening.” Gabriel poked only his head round the doorframe, so Winkler wouldn’t see his bloodstained jacket.

  Winkler lowered his newspaper. “I inspected those mushrooms.”

  “And?”

  “Innocuous. Completely. Used by the volk in a broth for treating headaches and such. Utter quackery, needless to say.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  Once in his chamber, Gabriel removed his jacket and shirt. Luckily, all that rainwater had prevented the bloody fabric from crusting to the wound.

  It was, thank God, but a flesh wound. A deep one, yes, but nothing serious. No embedded bullet. He’d suffered worse.

  He cleaned it with a wet cloth, doused it with brandy, and bandaged it as best he could with a few shreds of linen nightshirt.

  He stretched out on his bed, shirtless, with the brandy bottle in one hand and his second Webley revolver in the other.

  There. Comfort and safety. The two guiding ideals of the British Empire. Although he rather doubted those guards would have the audacity to try to murder him in his bed. Surely Ghent, whoever he was, wished to cover his tracks.

  He took a deep swallow from the bottle.

  * * *

  A wet evening sank over Heidelberg. Prue and Hansel followed Franz through twisting, turning streets, dodging around puddles and dripping roofs. Franz quizzed them about Karl’s letter. Prue buttoned her lips, and Hansel was vague.

  The student’s beer hall that Franz took them to was the frolicsome kind. The wooden sign above the door had red lettering and a picture of a jumping pig. Someone was playing an accordion inside, badly enough to make your ears curl up and die. Prue could barely hear the accordion anyway, through all the clattering beer glasses and boyish hooting. The rowdiness rolled, along with light, cigarette smoke, and puffs of stale beer, out into the dark, narrow street.

  Prue wriggled her fingers into Hansel’s. He gave them a squeeze. Good. He wasn’t too mad about how she’d spilled the beans to Franz about the letter, then.

  “Come meet my friends,” Franz said over the uproar inside. “The fine student gentlemen of number seventeen, the castle stairs.”

  Number seventeen, the castle stairs? Was that really an address?

  “I’m awful hungry,” Prue whispered to Hansel. That was the truth. But she also couldn’t bear to meet new folks dressed in the ugly brown dress, with her hair under a milkmaid’s straw bonnet, and in a rain-drenched knitted shawl the color of mold.

  “Miss Bright desires something to eat,” Hansel said. “We shall have a meal, and then we shall go.”

  “I suppose it must be trying for you, Hansel,” Franz said, “seeing your old classmates in your . . . reduced circumstances.”

  Hansel met Franz’s eyes coolly. Then he led Prue to a table in the corner.

  26

  After they sat down, the barmaid came to ask what they wished to eat and drink.

  The barmaid wore a sapphire blue cotton dress with a tight bodice, puffy white sleeves, and a white swath of apron. She had shining raven-colored hair piled on her head. Her skin was a rare porcelain, without any sun coloring or pink. Her lips were red, her eyes onyx and darting.

  In fact—Prue felt an unfamiliar pang—she was prettier than Prue.

  Prue was accustomed to fellows of all ages walking into walls and tripping on their own bootlaces when they saw her. But these days, for the first time in her life, Prue wouldn’t describe herself as pretty. Ma had taught her that her beauty was her greatest prize and her meal ticket. Without it, Prue felt near invisible.

  Even Hansel, who in the first few weeks after Prue’s arrival at the castle had seemed enchanted, no longer looked at her the same way. The problem was, Prue realized, she’d fallen in love with him, right when the only thing she had to offer—her beauty—had vanished.

  She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes so Hansel wouldn’t see them. He was the one who ought to be crying, anyway. His pa was dead.

  Prue and Hansel studied Franz and his friends, who were crowded at a table on the other side of the beer hall.

  Franz was the runt of the litter. His friends were all strapping. When they whacked Franz’s back in jest, Prue reckoned it was with a mite more vigor than necessary. But Franz played along, even as the other young men seemed to be jeering at him.

  When the barmaid came around with more beer, the men all fell silent and stared after her like they were plants and she was the sun. Then, as soon as the barmaid was out of earshot, they stood to raise a toast. Almost like they were toasting . . . the barmaid. Prue saw flashes of red, white, and black ribbons wrapped around belts, hidden beneath jackets.

  “Look,” Prue whispered to Hansel. “Them secret society ribbons.”

  Hansel stole a look. “So they are.”

  After a while, the barmaid brought Hansel and Prue plates of oily noodles with cheese and bits of sausage. Prue dug in like a coal miner.

  Hansel forked noodles into his mouth, chewed. “I am not certain where to search for Snow White next. Perhaps we might visit my former history professor. Although. . . .”

  “You’re afraid he might laugh at you?”

  “Yes.” Hansel prodded noodles with his fork. “But my father was adamant that Snow White was a real lady. So, perhaps there is something in a dusty book somewhere. I do not know.”

  “A book?” Prue’s eyes fell on Franz, pretending to carouse with his fellows. He must’ve felt her looking, because his gaze slanted in her direction. His eyes were beady. “Franz said something about books to Miss Gertie at the ball the other night. Said there are some kind of old fairy tale books at the library.”

  Hansel hunched forward. “Which library? In Schloss Grunewald?”

  “No. He said they were in the one here, in Heidelberg.”

  Hansel slumped back in his chair. “The university library closed at five o’clock. We shall go there first thing in the morning.”

  They finished eating and paid. Without saying good-bye to Franz—he was in the middle of singing, beer glass aloft, with his student friends—they wandered out into the soggy night.

  Prue hugged her ratty shawl around her arms. “Where will we go?” Despite the ups and downs of her childhood, she’d never actually slept in a gutter. Yet.

  Hansel took her hand. “I know a safe place.”

  He led her to a row of houses facing the river. They stopped at a door painted dark blue. There was a white oval sign hanging above the door that Prue couldn’t read. It had a painted sprig of violets, though. That was reassuring. Prue was pretty sure dens of sin didn’t have painted violets on their signs.

  “Frau Bohm was my nursemaid at the castle when I was small.” Hansel knocked on the door. “After I was grown, she cared for some children at an estate outside of Mannheim. Now she runs this little boarding house. She will not turn us away.”

  The door swung open. A lofty lady with jutting bones like a scarecrow stood there. She wore a dove gray cotton gown, an immaculate white apron, and a white mobcap on her dark, gray-streaked hair. “Hansel!” She clasped her long fingers and said more things that Prue couldn’t understand. Then she looked at Prue, wearing an expression that was kind but inquisitive.

  Prue wanted to turn tail and jump into the river. She felt so grimy and crumpled. And she was fair certain there was a bit of dinner stuck between her two front teeth.

  Hansel drew her forward and introduced her. Frau Bohm smiled and led them inside, through to the back of the house and into a kitchen.

  Ma had never done a scrap of cooking, unless you counted cracking oysters and pouring champagne as cooking. Prue had somehow grown to young womanhood nourished by gingersnaps, pretzels, roasted peanuts, and frie
d dough purchased for pennies from New York street vendors. So Frau Bohm’s pristine little kitchen seemed like a wonderland of cross-stitched dish towels and shining copper pots.

  Hansel and Frau Bohm spoke softly in German for a bit, and they all drank chamomile tea. Frau Bohm cast a few maternal looks in Prue’s direction. Prue tried to dissolve into her periwinkle-painted chair.

  It seemed to work, because Hansel didn’t look her way. Not once.

  Then Frau Bohm led them upstairs, carrying two milky-globed hurricane lamps. Prue’s chamber was on one side of the corridor, and Hansel’s was on the other. Prue whispered good night, took one of the lamps, and shut herself in her chamber. She untied her bonnet strings, listening to Frau Bohm’s footsteps going back downstairs, and to the creak of Hansel’s door swinging closed.

  Impulsively, she tossed aside her bonnet and pushed open her door. “Hansel!” she whispered.

  He regarded her through the door crack. “What is it?”

  She paused. What was it? She wasn’t sure. Only that she felt like crying, and she wanted one last glimpse of him before she went to sleep, and—

  He crossed the corridor in a stride and took her face in his hands. His chest rose and fell, and his eyebrows were drawn together in fierce concentration as he gazed down at her.

  Prue couldn’t breathe, and she wasn’t sure if her kneecaps were jiggling from fright or something else altogether. “Do you . . . do you see me?” she whispered.

  Surprise flickered over his features. “See you? Of course I see you, Prue. How could I see anything else?”

  A lump gathered in her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make it last, him holding her head, his palms rough and warm against her cheeks. “But I’m so ugly now. How can you bear it?”

  He paused. He stroked a thumb over her cheekbone. “There are many ways to be beautiful,” he finally said.

  Then he turned and went back into his chamber.

  Prue held her eyes shut. Her body whirred with his touch. But she didn’t understand what he had meant.

  * * *

  Schloss Grunewald was quiet that night.