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

  The servants kept to themselves. Miss Amaryllis refused all admittance to her chamber and lay sobbing in the dark.

  Mrs. Coop was abed, thrashing and muttering, under the effects of the hysteria drops.

  Ophelia stashed the revolver Penrose had given her under a sofa cushion in Mrs. Coop’s chamber. Then she went to the window, pulled the drapes aside, and stared out at Prue’s desolate tower. No jug in the window. Which likely meant Prue had not yet returned from Heidelberg.

  Ophelia hoped to hickory that Prue was all right, wherever she was.

  She curled up on the sofa and watched over Mrs. Coop until she nodded off, too.

  In the morning, Ophelia realized she wouldn’t be able to sneak away to Baden-Baden again. Mrs. Coop was up and about, and making demands. It was all Ophelia could do to transport the revolver from under the sofa cushion up into her own chamber unseen.

  When she spied the greengrocer’s delivery lorry outside the kitchen door, she dashed off a note to Professor Penrose and entrusted it to the deliveryman.

  * * *

  Gabriel was relieved that Miss Flax couldn’t accompany him. She’d be safer at the castle.

  After breakfast, he took a hired carriage into Baden-Baden and went directly to the Conversationshaus.

  It was probably madness to go there after what had happened yesterday in the wood. But even if Ghent’s guards were bent on killing Gabriel, they surely wouldn’t do it here. It’d be bad for business, for one thing.

  He checked the tearoom and the gaming rooms. They were nearly empty since it was before luncheon. Many of the town’s denizens were surely still abed, sleeping off the effects of last night’s revelries.

  No sign of Princess Verushka.

  He crossed the marble foyer. He’d nearly made it to the doors that led outside when two looming forms appeared from behind one of the great pillars.

  The guards.

  “Good morning,” Gabriel said, lifting his hat. He didn’t stop walking.

  One of the guards, the one with the black caterpillar of an eyebrow, stepped in his path. “Have a pleasant ride yesterday?” he growled.

  “Yes, thanks awfully. Despite the weather and”—Gabriel’s shoulder, bandaged beneath his shirt and jacket, throbbed—“a bit more excitement than we’d planned for.”

  “We know what you are searching for—”

  “Do you? Because I’m not certain that I know—”

  “—and if you enter the wood again, you and that strange woman who wears gentlemen’s clothes will die.”

  “Thank you for the suggestion.” Gabriel lifted his hat again and dodged by the guards.

  They didn’t follow.

  * * *

  Across the gravel drive from the Conversationshaus was a long, tree-shaded avenue. Fashionable ladies and gentlemen sauntered up and down the white gravel. Birds chirped and the sun sparkled. The only traces of yesterday’s rainstorm were the puddles shimmering on the gravel.

  Gabriel took a seat at one of the many green-painted benches along the avenue and pretended to read a newspaper.

  Now and then he glanced up to see society matrons thrusting their daughters at gentlemen, blushing debutantes casting shy looks at Russian officers, matrons flirting with gentlemen who were not, perhaps, their husbands. It was rather like an aviary during mating season. Some of the birds were gorgeously plumed, but—he watched a corpulent old fossil strolling with a damsel one-third his age—others resembled overfed vultures.

  It was difficult to picture Mr. Smith here. What business could he have in Baden-Baden’s most fashionable spot? And why, for that matter, was he mapping the forest about Schloss Grunewald?

  Gabriel had finished one newspaper and was halfway through a second by the time he finally sighted Princess Verushka.

  She was as lovely as he remembered, with her leaf green, flounced walking gown, parasol, and a smart little hat. She was tripping along beside a dignified-looking gentleman in a dark suit, silk hat, and a waxed white moustache.

  Gabriel buried his nose in his newspaper as they came closer.

  The princess emitted a tinkling laugh. “How you flatter me, baron,” she said in French, with her rich Russian accent. “Calling me a debutante! Why, you know I am, sadly, a widow.”

  “The loss of the prince was indeed a tragedy,” the gentleman said, “but now at last the rest of the world may enjoy the exquisite charms of the bride he kept so jealously locked away.”

  Gabriel peered over the top of the newspaper as the princess and her squire passed. She looked smug. As well she might; Gabriel recognized the gentleman as a high-ranking French politician and wealthy aristocrat.

  If Princess Verushka were Ghent’s mistress, perhaps it was her task to socialize with Baden-Baden’s elite. Although Ghent, if he had red blood in his veins, wouldn’t be too pleased about the way she was flirting.

  Gabriel followed their retreating forms with his eyes. Another gentleman strode up to them. They were out of earshot, but the second gentleman—also in the prime of life—appeared to be having words with the baron. The princess watched fretfully. Then the second man thrust something—a letter—into the princess’s hands and marched away.

  The baron appeared to quiz the princess; she was tearful. The baron made a cold bow before he, too, stalked away.

  Gabriel folded his newspapers.

  Smith had been mistaken. The princess was not Ghent’s mistress. She was on the hunt for a wealthy husband. And, evidently, she’d been overfilling her dance card.

  She hurried away, in the opposite direction the baron had gone.

  Gabriel followed.

  * * *

  Princess Verushka, as soon as she’d turned onto a side street, no longer took mincing steps. Her stride was purposeful.

  She walked for fifteen minutes, Gabriel trailing a block behind. She left the central district, with its magnificent hotels and shops, and entered a cramped quarter where everyday people lived. The streets were tighter, packed up against a hillside, and the windows fluttered with washing hung out to dry. Grubby children romped in the streets, bony cats slunk along gutters.

  Presently, she turned into a side alley. Gabriel stopped at the corner and poked his head round the building.

  She slowed as she neared a door. A faded wooden sign read Pension Schmidt.

  A boardinghouse.

  Two little girls in pinafores and caps perched on the doorstep, chattering in German and playing with dolls.

  “Oh, get out of my way,” the princess said, pushing by them. She disappeared into the boardinghouse.

  Gabriel pulled his head back around the corner, stunned.

  Princess Verushka had spoken in English to the little girls. With what was quite unmistakably an American accent.

  27

  Ophelia colored Mrs. Coop’s hair a deep ebony, using ingredients she’d purchased in the apothecary’s shop: four grains nitrate of silver dissolved into a bottle of rosewater and half a dram of aqua ammonia. The effect, against Mrs. Coop’s powder-white skin and painted lips, was enough to make your hair stand on end. But Mrs. Coop was pleased and spent the remainder of the morning trying on gowns and preening in front of the boudoir mirrors.

  When she finally collapsed on her bed to rest, Ophelia went to Mr. Coop’s study.

  The study was dim and already musty-smelling. She locked herself inside and pulled open the velvet drapes.

  First, she flipped through the stacks of papers on the desk and in its drawers. Business documents from America—one pile was all about the Oregon Territory Railway Company and another concerned land parcels in St. Louis.

  What could Princess Verushka have wanted with those?

  The opposite wall was filled, floor to ceiling, with a bookcase. Now there was a notion: stage plays were chockablock with papers hidden in the pages of books.r />
  Ophelia hurried over and plucked a volume off the shelf, opened it, and shook the pages. Nothing fell out.

  She braced herself. There had to be hundreds upon hundreds of books. But she intended to shake as many as it took.

  She began to shake the books, one by one. They were all old, gilt-stamped volumes in German. Dust billowed up.

  After a few dozen books, she flopped into a chair for a breather. Her eyes and nose itched from the dust.

  Her gaze drifted to the ornate brass fire screen, then to the mantelpiece. There was a blue Chinese jar up there and a framed photograph of Mrs. Coop, all creamy shoulders, gleaming hair, and dewy eyes, wearing a rich necklace and furs.

  But there was something strange about it.

  Yes—she stood and picked up the frame—the photograph was crooked.

  She turned the frame over and unfastened the back.

  There, between the frame and the photograph, was an envelope. Unmarked. She pried it out.

  There was a clatter of horse hooves down in the forecourt.

  She dashed to the window. A carriage had pulled to a stop.

  Two men jumped out. Inspector Schubert and Herr Benjamin. They marched towards the castle doors.

  The Leviathan had landed.

  Ophelia stuffed the envelope into her bodice and ran.

  * * *

  Gabriel paused on the street corner and weighed his options. He could take the information of Princess Verushka’s charade to the police, or he could confront her himself, right now.

  He thought of Schubert’s derisive face and decided on the latter option.

  But just as he was about to go round the corner into the alley where the boardinghouse was, Princess Verushka sailed right past him—she didn’t see him—and hailed a carriage in the street.

  “Schilltag,” he heard her say to the driver. “Schloss Grunewald.”

  There wasn’t time to return to his own carriage, waiting in the town center. He found another—it cost him several precious minutes—ordered the driver to take him to Schloss Grunewald, and leapt inside.

  Princess Verushka was an impostor and, apparently, hard up. She’d just been jilted by two suitors in one morning.

  Hence, she couldn’t be up to any good.

  When Gabriel’s carriage rumbled through Schilltag, heading towards the castle road, he glimpsed a woman’s tall, slim form, a white face, a charcoal gray gown, outside the inn.

  Miss Flax.

  He pounded on the roof, and the carriage jolted to a stop. He jumped out.

  When Miss Flax saw him, her face registered relief. She dashed over. “I’ve found it,” she said.

  “Are you well, Miss Flax? I—”

  “I found what the princess was searching for in Mr. Coop’s study.”

  He stared down at her. She appeared pale and strained. She hadn’t even a bonnet on.

  “You’d better come inside the inn,” he said.

  He ordered the driver to wait, and they shut themselves up in the inn’s sitting room.

  Miss Flax handed him an envelope. Inside was a single handwritten page.

  My Dearest Pearl,

  Goodness, I’ve heard of pearls before swine, but I never fancied how frightfully amusing a Pearl in a chicken coop might be! Imagine my delight when I learned that you had wed the New York millionaire Homer T. Coop. A millionaire! Just as we both swore we’d do when we were girls in that milliner’s shop in Berkeley Street. How well you have done for yourself. Imagine, too, my delight in seeing your daughter Amaryllis so grown-up. Takes after her father—a dog catcher, wasn’t he? Or was it a fishmonger? Something to do with little beasts.

  Now, dear Pearl, as your oldest friend, I’m certain you will take pity on me when I say that I have not managed to snare a fresh millionaire. Not even an old one. Although I am called Princess Verushka now, fate has not been kind. But I am certain you will be able to help. If not, perhaps Homer T. Coop will help me—of course, that might entail revealing to him a few tidbits that you may have neglected to tell him yourself. But what, possibly, could be the harm in that?

  I am staying at Pension Schmidt in Baden-Baden. I eagerly await your response.

  —Lily

  “Daughter?” Penrose said. “Miss Amaryllis is Mrs. Coop’s daughter?”

  “I wonder we didn’t see it before. Mrs. Coop is certainly old enough. But it’s difficult to understand a mother being so cruel to her own child.”

  “We moderns detest the idea of cruel mothers. Even the Grimms edited out all the nasty mamas in the original tales and replaced them with stepmothers. Sits better.” He paused. “It’s clear that Coop knew nothing of Mrs. Coop’s true relationship to Miss Amaryllis until he saw this note.”

  “Well, he must’ve known he hadn’t gone to the chapel with a spring chicken.”

  “In order to appear attractive to Coop, doubtless Pearl had to pretend to a more ingénue role than she was accustomed. To admit to being a mother, well, that changes things in a gentleman’s eyes. Far better to pass the daughter off as a clinging sister.” Penrose told Ophelia what he’d unearthed about Princess Verushka that morning. “Now we know why the princess was searching through Coop’s desk. This is a blackmail note. And it’s addressed to Pearl, not Coop. Which means that at some point before he died, Coop got hold of this note—”

  “And learned his wife’s secret.”

  “No wonder he seemed so furious the day he died, and no wonder he was drinking heavily. He’d been disillusioned about his new bride.”

  Ophelia considered. That’s what Mr. Coop must’ve meant when he said those things to Prue. Chippies posing as ladies and daughters pretending they weren’t daughters, and all that. She’d never told Penrose that part, for fear he’d figure out they were actresses.

  “Wait,” she said. “Mrs. Coop and the princess were together when that apple was poisoned and put on the tea table. What if the princess got Mrs. Coop to lie for her as part of her blackmail plot?”

  “If she merely wanted money from Mrs. Coop, then she hadn’t any reason to kill. However, Coop may have threatened divorce. I understand you Americans are mad for it. Divorce would mean, for Mrs. Coop, losing all the wealth she had so recently attained, so it wouldn’t have been in the princess’s best interest. However, after Coop was killed, she would’ve swiftly realized that it was in her interest if Mrs. Coop didn’t take the blame. After all, it’s difficult to extract money from someone in prison.”

  “You’re saying the princess didn’t kill Coop?”

  “Correct.”

  “And that Mrs. Coop did.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But that the princess knew about it and helped her to cover it up.”

  “We’ve got to speak to the princess. If we tell her we’ve found the blackmail note, she’ll talk. She’s gone up to the castle. Come on.”

  Ophelia tensed. “No.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Miss Flax. You’ve spent the last several days insisting on coming along on every excursion, and now when—”

  “I can’t go back to the castle.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  She swallowed. “Let me wait for you here.”

  “Very well.”

  * * *

  The Heidelberg University library was built of pinky-brown stones and fronted by lush green gardens. It had big rectangular windows, sharp spires, and bulging, carved stone fruits and ladies’ heads all around the front doors.

  Prue and Hansel mounted the steps. Hansel didn’t seem to want to talk, which was fine with Prue. Just the thought of whatever it was that had happened in Frau Bohm’s corridor last night made her break into a cold sweat.

  Inside, the library was like a church. If a church had carved wood shelves filled with books instead of pews and smelled like papery mold instead of incens
e. They went to a desk occupied by a sour little man with a few hairs combed over his head and spectacle lenses of paperweight thickness. He was stamping books with violence.

  A malcontent librarian. Prue had heard stories. She’d never actually been inside a library before.

  The librarian glanced up. His eyes skimmed their seedy getups, but when Hansel said something to him in German, the librarian’s sour expression sweetened up a little.

  The librarian scurried out from behind his desk and led them through the shelves.

  “He said,” Franz whispered to Prue, “that there is a very old manuscript about the life of Snow White in this library. It is housed in a special room where they keep the rarest books.”

  “He’s going to let the likes of us paw it over?”

  “I told him who I am. And I said we were members of the university dramatic society and that we are wearing costumes for a rehearsal.”

  Prue smiled for the first time all day. “Smart aleck.”

  The special book room had a churchy hush. Prue could practically hear the dust motes whispering as they twirled through sunbeams.

  No one else was in the room. The librarian unlocked a glass-fronted bookcase and slid out a large, thin, leather-bound volume. He set it on the table and left them to it.

  The book’s cover was green, stamped with golden curlicues. The pages inside were intricate and colorful, with fancy hand lettering in black ink. The words were surrounded by borders filled with colorful pictures touched with gold.

  “It is an illuminated manuscript,” Hansel said.

  They inspected the first few pages.

  “The pictures look like a fairy story, for certain,” Prue said. “A castle, a girl with dark hair and red lips, a forest filled with animals. Lots of spotted toadstools. A nasty queen with a mirror.”

  Hansel nodded. “The text is very much in keeping with the versions of the Snow White stories that I know. Here is the cottage.”

  Prue studied the picture. Seven short fellows standing in front of a little house. “Does it look like the one they found in the forest by Castle Grunewald?”

  “It is difficult to say. The one the woodsman found was overgrown and decayed, and surrounded by large trees. The trees in this picture are mere saplings.”