Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna Read online

  Ophelia reluctantly took it.

  They strolled out, past the orangerie and into the terraced formal gardens behind the château. Snow piled on balustrades, hedges, and fountains. Water dripped from statues. Puddles glistened on geometric paths.

  “You have been absent for hours, monsieur le comte,” Ophelia said as a way to begin the conversation.

  “Ah, if you mean to monitor my movements, Mademoiselle Stonewall, that will prove a fruitless endeavor. I will not be beholden to any woman, no matter how belle.”

  Ophelia stiffened. Griffe had never before spoken to her like that. “It is only that we have not been alone for a moment since, well, since my arrival—”

  “Is that not what you desired? You did not meet me in the ballroom as I requested in my note yesterday evening.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, I fell asleep—”

  “That is not what Clémence told me.”

  Clémence was spying on her? “I don’t know what your servants presume to—”

  “Clémence is devoted to the family. She has been with us since she was a young girl. Come now, Mademoiselle Stonewall. Do not attempt to fool me. You did not wish to meet. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Do I disgust you?”

  “What? No, of—of course not.” She took a breath. “I wish to speak of the wedding. You might have consulted with me. What of my parents in Cleveland? What of my friends?” Ophelia pulled her arm from Griffe’s and turned to look up at him. “You can’t go springing things like that on a lady. I ought to have a say in the matter.”

  “Ah, oui?” Griffe suddenly seemed too large, his eyes penetrating. “Is there some reason you wish to delay the wedding? Two people deeply in love do not require pomp and display to marry—or do you have something you wish to say to me?”

  “For starters, I’ll have you know that everyone suspects that the hasty wedding is on account of . . .” Ophelia’s cheeks burned. “On account of, um, a third party.”

  “Eh?”

  “A very small third party?”

  “A babe?” Griffe burst out laughing.

  “My dignity is at stake,” Ophelia said. “Does that not trouble you?”

  He kept laughing.

  Oh, how she would’ve relished throwing that confounded ruby ring at his feet. But the ring was gone, and so she was stuck. “I saw you prowling through the corridor outside my chamber last night,” she blurted.

  “Ah, oui? You will soon grow accustomed to that, chérie.”

  Ugh. “I beg you to change your mind about this rushed wedding. Let us marry in the springtime, with the flowers blooming and the birds chirping, and my parents—”

  “Non.” Griffe’s face was cold, his voice flat. “We marry in four days.”

  Ophelia hated being told no more than anything in the world. She ached to scream WHY? and kick something. Instead, she summoned all her acting abilities to say “Very well,” to meekly bow her head, to walk quietly away.

  The rest of the afternoon and early evening was wasted checking for Gerard in his chamber and in the kitchen. The stagecoach driver seemed to have disappeared. Ophelia’s only consolation was that his satchel was still in his chamber (filled with unclean garments and nothing else) and that he had a lady friend in the château with whom to play hide-and-seek.

  9

  Dinner was subdued, although everyone consumed quite a lot of wine in a dogged sort of way. Gabriel noticed that Miss Flax did not once look at Griffe, who was for his part drinking heavily again. Bernadette did not touch her fish or meat and ate only vegetables. Odd.

  Tolbert, spine curved like a spigot, kept his eyes on his plate. Gabriel had ridden up the tributary valley that afternoon in search of the caves marked on the map in the library. Why, he wasn’t certain. There was simply something to all this. A legendary beast, which some of the locals still feared. A local tale about a beast. And now, a furtive zoologist on the hunt for, quite possibly, the fossilized remains of said beast.

  How this connected to fairy tales, Gabriel couldn’t picture. But he tasted it: the magic.

  He hadn’t found the first cave. The sun was behind the hills by then, so he’d turned back. Next, he’d figured out which chamber was Tolbert’s, in the hopes of discerning what he was about. But it had been locked up tight.

  After dinner, everyone was compelled to view Forthwith’s conjuring tricks in the salon, and then to listen to Ivy and Henrietta sing songs to Bernadette’s pianoforte accompaniment.

  Ivy’s performance of Brahms was pitch-perfect, if mechanical. Henrietta’s selection was a saucy Spanish song, to which she flicked a fan and batted her eyelashes at Larsen.

  When Henrietta was through, Ivy said in a sweet voice, “How nice, Mrs. Brighton, that you are feeling well enough—as a recent widow, I mean—to perform such an enthusiastic song.”

  Gabriel had always fancied that Ivy said such things out of childlike honesty. Now, he wondered. Ivy was intelligent. She could read Latin, Greek, and even bits of Old Norse. So how could she be so obtuse when it came to the feelings of others?

  “And do you know, it is so strange,” Ivy said to Henrietta. “I feel as though I have seen you before.”

  Panic flashed in Henrietta’s eyes, but she smiled. “Why, I did not know you had traveled to Cleveland, Miss Banks. Did you attend the symphony while there? The fine art museum, perhaps?”

  “No, it’s not that,” Ivy said.

  “My precious Ivy never forgets a face,” Banks said. He coughed.

  “Are you well, Monsieur Banks?” Bernadette asked.

  “He is as healthy as a horse,” Ivy said quickly.

  Truth be told, Banks was a bit qualmy-looking.

  Gabriel wandered away from the group. Forthwith took to the piano, accompanying Ivy.

  “Professor, take a gander at this.” Miss Flax plopped down next to Gabriel on a secluded sofa and wiggled out something from beneath her elbow glove. She dropped it in his hand.

  Gabriel’s spirits rose. Was it wrong for his spirits to rise, when they were both engaged to others? Probably.

  He poked at the thing in his hand. “I daresay this is a fossilized tooth. I am no dentist, but I believe it is—or, was—a human tooth.”

  “I fancied it was a pig’s tooth. See how it has so many little bumps? Human molars don’t have half as many.”

  “Ah, yes. Tubercles, I believe those bumps are called.”

  “You’d make your dentist proud.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “That’s the funny thing. I found it in the dead vicar’s trunk.”

  “I suppose I’d better not ask why you were looking in his trunk.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “All right. And were there other fossils?”

  “No. Only his clothes and shoes and things, a Bible, a letter from Sir Christy’s lawyer in London, bobbins of silk thread, and this tooth, stuck underneath the trunk’s lining.”

  “Yesterday evening I happened to see a sketch in the notebook of Tolbert—where has he gone, I wonder?” Gabriel glanced about the salon. No Tolbert.

  “Back to study in his chamber, I’d wager.”

  “I saw a most puzzling sketch, of a jawbone that appeared to possess both human and, well, boarlike traits.”

  “Go along! A boar man?”

  “As outlandish as it seems, yes. I wonder if this tooth came from that jawbone.”

  “It must be a hoax. Or a mistake. Either way, Tolbert said he was searching for something that had been stolen from his chamber. Do you suppose this tooth—or even an entire jawbone—was what he was missing?”

  “That does not seem unlikely.”

  “But that means that the jawbone may have been in the vicar’s trunk.”

  “Yes. But then removed—less one tooth.”

  Miss Flax was frowning again, tha
t look of fierce concentration Gabriel had not too long ago been smitten with. He ran a finger beneath his collar. Deuced hot in here.

  She said, “All this time, I’ve supposed that the murderer—”

  “Murderer?” Gabriel glanced over at the group. Ivy was trilling out an aria; no one would hear. Still, he lowered his voice. “Miss Flax, tell me precisely why you believe the vicar was murdered.”

  She told him how she had reasoned that Ivy’s stolen bottle of traveling sickness tablets was out of place next to the vicar’s body. How several people in the château had had items stolen from their chambers last night. How she figured that the vicar might’ve suspected, or even cornered, the thief and paid a deadly price. How the stagecoach driver broke the whippletree on purpose.

  “Indeed?”

  “The village blacksmith confirmed it.”

  “How industrious you are, Miss Flax. I briefly met the driver, Gerard, in the château stables. A most unseemly fellow.”

  Miss Flax was barely listening to him. “I’ve been supposing that the murderer and the thief were one and the same,” she said, “but what if the vicar was the thief?”

  “Then where are all of those stolen items now?”

  “Well, someone else must’ve stolen them again. From his trunk, I’d guess, if this tooth is really from Tolbert’s stolen jawbone.”

  “That is excessively complicated, is it not?”

  “Nothing wrong with a little complication here and there. Do you have any better notions?”

  “No. And this time, I am blessedly free of being entangled in this death—as are you, I should point out.”

  “Not quite.” Her shoulders drooped.

  “What is it?

  “What?”

  “How are you entangled?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Nothing I can do about that.”

  Gabriel gave the tooth back to her. As intriguing as a boar-man fossil might be, it wasn’t in his realm of expertise—or fascination. Miss Flax hid it under the edge of her elbow glove in a deft way that made him wonder, not for the first time, if she’d ever been a pickpocket.

  “Did you manage to hear the tale of the old village woman?” Miss Flax asked.

  “Only a snippet, but it was rather intriguing.” Gabriel told her about Madame Genepy’s mention of castles, and how he thought that might enable him to date the tale, not to one hundred years ago, but to the middle ages. “It would be a scholarly coup.”

  “Not only scholarly.” Miss Flax’s dark eyes seemed to delve straight into Gabriel’s heart. “I’d say it’s rather gratifying to your fairy tale obsession, isn’t it, professor?”

  “Need I answer?”

  “I’ve never read the tale, you know.”

  “What? Never? I’ll give you a copy at once. There’s an English translation floating about the château. I would be most interested to hear what you think of it.”

  A piercing cry made them both spin around on the sofa. Ivy’s aria came to a warbling stop. Bernadette was yanking a long, gauzy white thing from Meringue’s jaws.

  “Let go, you vile animal!” Bernadette screamed in French. “Maman’s wedding veil! Oh, he will ruin it!”

  “He is not vile,” Madame Dieudonné snapped.

  “Allow me,” Forthwith said. He grabbed Meringue’s sausage-like body and pulled. Meringue shook the veil back and forth as though breaking a hare’s neck.

  “You do not know how to manage beasts,” Larsen said. He bent over and squeezed Meringue’s snout on either side. Meringue’s mouth popped open.

  Bernadette seesawed the veil from his teeth and bundled it into her arms. “What is this?” she said in English, sniffing the veil. “Who has smeared the veil with pâté de foie gras?” Her voice cracked. “Who has done this?” Her eyes fell on Miss Flax. Everyone else swiveled to look at Miss Flax, too.

  Miss Flax seemed to be frozen, lips parted, eyes round.

  “Someone who wishes to delay the wedding, quite obviously,” Larsen said. “Come now, what became of the music?”

  * * *

  At bedtime, Ophelia thought the parakeet might enjoy an airing. But when she swung open its little door, the parakeet looked offended.

  “Oh, fine. But I see you’ve eaten piles of sunflower seeds.”

  Ophelia readied herself for bed. She couldn’t sleep. She tried to take her mind off things by reading the English copy of de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast that Professor Penrose had given her. It was artificial and even dismaying, especially the insistence on womanly self-sacrifice and submission. Ugh. Although, Ophelia’s Yankee spirit liked the line “patience, perseverance, or all is lost.”

  She tossed the book aside. She thought about the stolen ring, the looming wedding, her suddenly sinister fiancé, and the way everyone had looked at her as though she had smeared pâté on that veil. Meanwhile, the ruby ring could be anywhere. Luckily, she had a lifeline: The stagecoach driver, Gerard, had cut the whippletree rings. He must know something. Wherever he was.

  Patience, perseverance, or all is lost? No truer words had ever been written. Ophelia turned down her gas lamp and went miserably to sleep.

  * * *

  In the morning, Ophelia dressed herself. She refused to summon that spying Clémence. Lucky for Ophelia, she didn’t require tight corset laces. If the fashion was an hourglass shape, well, her shape was more like a water glass.

  All Ophelia could think of was finding the stagecoach driver, Gerard. Unfortunately, before bed last night she had promised to meet Bernadette in her boudoir before breakfast. Ophelia suspected that Bernadette wished to privately confront her about smearing pâté on the wedding veil. Ophelia changed the parakeet’s seeds and water and arranged its cage closer to the sunny window. The newspaper at the bottom of the cage would need changing soon.

  “Come in,” Bernadette called in response to Ophelia’s knock.

  Ophelia stepped into an airy, feminine boudoir, which lay in the family wing of the château.

  Bernadette sat at a desk, writing. “I am just finishing some invitations, Mademoiselle Stonewall. Garon asked that the ceremony be kept small, but I must invite the neighbors. There is General de Beauchamp in Beynac, and Princess Marguerite of Poland lives not far away in Turenne.”

  “Oh, good,” Ophelia said, feeling queasy. She went to a wardrobe, upon which hung a cream silk dress. “This is your mother’s gown?”

  “Oui.” Bernadette stuck her pen in its holder. “Is it not beautiful? I do hope it fits.”

  Then Bernadette didn’t mean to demand an explanation for the pâté? What a relief.

  Ophelia touched the gown. A high-waisted bodice gave way to a cascade of skirts. “It’s lovely, but isn’t it, well, I am not certain it will be a good fit.” The hem would fall to Ophelia’s shins, while the bodice was wide enough for Ophelia and a cat.

  “Well, of course. That is why I wished for you to come this morning and try it on.” Bernadette bustled over. “Would you undress behind the screen in the corner, there? We will just take in the bodice and sleeves and let out the hem, and it will fit you like a glove. Go on, then. What are you waiting for? We must breakfast, and then set out on the hunt. I hoped to pin it for the maid to sew today. The clock is ticking.”

  Ophelia didn’t need reminding.

  10

  After Bernadette finished pinning the wedding gown, Ophelia dressed again and went downstairs. She was ravenous, but before breakfast she wished to have another look for Gerard.

  She took the back stairs to the third-story servants’ quarters, where Abel had led her yesterday.

  Gerard’s door was ajar, but when Ophelia put her eye to the crack, she saw nothing but a messy bed, the valise, an empty wine jug on the table, and—ugh—an unemptied chamber pot.

  Well, he ha
d come back.

  She hurried downstairs, all the way down, to the kitchen.

  The cook who had discovered the vicar’s body, Marielle, stirred a pot. A maid pushed past with a tray loaded with bread rolls. Both servants had wide, darting eyes. Almost as though they were afraid of something.

  “Oh, hullo, Miss Stonewall,” Abel called from the plank table. “I suppose you’re looking for me?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh, no?” Abel scowled as he stuffed a chunk of butter-dripping roll in his mouth. “Done with me, are you? I think you’ll find that, this being France and all, most people only speak French. You’re shipwrecked without me.”

  Ophelia went to the table. “I’m looking for Gerard. Have you seen him?”

  “I saw him relieving himself out the window this morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “And then I saw him riding away down the château drive. Lopsided, mind you, and smoking a cigarette, but somehow managing nonetheless.”

  “Did you ask him about”—Ophelia leaned forward and lowered her voice—“about cutting the whippletree rings?”

  “Certainly not. I don’t have a death wish. I only saw him—I didn’t speak with him. Who put the coffeepot all the way at the other end of the table? The servants are unaccountably lax this morning. Pour me another cup of coffee, would you?”

  “I’m not your butler.”

  “You’re already standing.”

  “Get it yourself.”

  “I’m going to be a king one day, you realize.”

  “I don’t even pour coffee for kings.”

  “Well, I don’t fancy helping you with your sleuthing anymore.”

  “Fine.”

  “I think I’ll go hunt rose beetles in the orangerie, instead. Why should I work for you? You’re only an American. I’d much rather speak to, oh, to Lord Harrington. Now there is a nobleman. We’re different than the rest of you, somehow. We had a nice chat yesterday, actually. He said he’d telegraph Sir Christy’s solicitor on my behalf.” Abel puffed himself up.