Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) (29 page)

*   *   *

“You’re an actress,”
Professor Penrose said to Ophelia. He closed the door of Gasthaus Schatz’s sitting room behind him.

Ophelia darted to her feet. She’d been fretting on the edge of a chair before the cold fireplace. “Who told you that?”

“Is it true?”

She held her head high. “Yes. It’s true.”

“That explains the disguises,” he said. “The accent. What about leaping from running horses into trees? Surely one doesn’t perform such feats on the stage.”

“I’ve been an actress for nearly six years. Before that I worked in. . . .”

This was silly. He wasn’t the Grand Turk. And what did she care if he knew, anyway?

“I was employed by P. Q. Putnam’s Traveling Circus in New England,” Ophelia said. “Then there was the war, and the circus folded. I found work as an actress in a variety theater troupe—that’s where I met Prue. Before the circus, I had a job in a woolen mill. But that was for only six months or so. I’ve been making my own way since I was seventeen years old. You must understand, I only did all this for Prue.”

“Only did all what?”

“You don’t think I—”

“No, I don’t think you and Miss Bright are murderesses. I simply wish to know what, precisely, you mean.”

“Prue got herself fired on our way to England, see. On the steamship. The little mumchance made a mess of telling the lady our theater troupe owner was chasing that he was really married.”

“Ah. Well, Schubert is up at the castle now, you understand. He means to arrest both of you.”

“What am I to do?”

“The princess suggested that Smith is the one we want.”

“We can’t keep chasing after our tails like this!”

“Have you a better suggestion?”

Ophelia jutted her chin. “Give me a minute or two.”

“Listen,” Penrose said. “Smith lied to us about the princess—we know that now. But when he did so, it occurs to me that he made a small error.”

“Error?”

“He connected the princess to Ghent and to the gaming establishment in his efforts to mislead us. That means he knows, somehow, that the gaming establishment is linked to the murders.”

“We ought to find Smith, then.”

“I searched for him at the castle. He’s nowhere to be found. No, I’ve got to try to speak to Ghent again.”

“He’ll kill us!”

“Not necessarily. Do you recall the manager in the tearoom saying Ghent enjoys risky wagers?”

Ophelia nodded.

“Well, Princess Verushka said something similar. So, I suggest we give Ghent an invitation he’ll find difficult to turn down.”

P
rue and Hansel hoofed it down the fifty-three castle steps, back to Heidelberg’s streets.

“If we return to the library,” Hansel said, “we might ask if anyone has seen Miss Gertie Darling, and attempt to track her movements.”

“She could be anywhere.” Prue wiped sweat from under the edge of her straw bonnet. “Supposing that the last page of the book really does say where Snow White is buried, and supposing Miss Gertie wants to find the tomb as much as we do, well, she could be headed to a churchyard or the railway station or, for all we know, to kingdom come.”

“It is worth attempting. We have nothing else.”

They started with the librarian, who wasn’t amused to see them again. He told Hansel that Gertie had gone out the side door.

Outside the side door was a walkway. Students and learned-looking gents walked to and fro.

“There,” Prue said. “A gardener.” He was old and bent, sweeping the pavement. “He’s sweeping slow enough to have been there for an age.”

Hansel described Gertie to the gardener. The gardener squinted, nodded, and pointed down a leafy walkway.

“He said she went this way about two hours ago,” Hansel said.

The walkway led away from the university buildings and back into the town. There was an outdoor coffee garden across the way, and people were drinking and eating on metal tables and chairs in the sunshine.

They asked one of the waiters about Miss Gertie. Someone matching her description had come and drunk five cups of tea and devoured three apple dumplings while poring over some sort of paper. Then she had left, going towards the university, not fifteen minutes earlier.

They hightailed it back down the leafy walkway.

“What business could she have at the university,” Prue said, “once she got hold of that page? Unless. . . .”

“Unless Snow White is somewhere at the university?”

“That would be plum peculiar. There ain’t any burials here, are there?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

They were passing by a group of students, who were lolling on the grass in a courtyard. Hansel stopped and spoke to them briefly. The students laughed, and one of them pointed to a building across the courtyard.

Hansel thanked them. “They saw her,” he said to Prue. “Hurry.”

The building they had been directed to was ivy clad with mullioned windows.

“The philology building,” Hansel said.

“What’s that?”

“It is many things, but most significantly, it is the building that houses Professor Winkler’s office.”

“That horrible old fairy tale professor?” Prue balked at the door. “I’d rather meet up with a gouty grizzly bear.”

“Winkler will not be here,” Hansel said. “He is still in the midst of his study of the cottage. But there might be a reason Miss Darling wishes to visit his office.”

Inside, the philology building smelled like mildew, and the corridors were dark and creaking. They crept along. The first floor had lecture halls filled with desks. All of the halls were empty except one, where a man in a pulpit was droning to a pack of yawning students.

They went upstairs. It was even more murky than the first story, and it smelled of vinegar and something leathery. They went along the corridor, stopping at each closed door to read the nameplates.

The nameplate on the last door in the corridor said
Dr. Siegfried Winkler
.

The door was ajar. Large, sharp splinters speared up around the knob and lock.

Prue met Hansel’s eyes. Someone had smashed their way in.

They tiptoed through.

Prue had expected maybe a desk and a bookshelf, some stacks of paper. There was a desk, sure, and piles of untidy books and papers. There was also a door on the far side of the office, gaping open. It led to some cavernous, dark room.

Hansel laid a finger to his lips, tipped his head.

Rustling. Coming from that big, dark room.

Inside the room, that vinegar-and-leather smell hung on the air. Shelves reached from floor to ceiling, filled with wooden crates. A long, cluttered counter stretched down the middle of the room. It was too dim to see what was on the counter, but it looked like boxes and glass cases and things. Maybe more of those gold-test fixings the professor had had at the castle.

Miss Gertie was nowhere to be seen.

“This don’t look like a bookworm’s hideout,” Prue whispered. “Looks like a druggist’s shop.”

They had reached the middle counter when Gertie loomed up from behind it.

Prue shrieked. Hansel muttered something that didn’t sound too gentlemanly.

“You pair.” Gertie glared at them across the counter. Her pale eyes did not blink. “Why are you following me? Isn’t it quite enough that you intruded upon my privacy at the sanatorium? Now you follow me all the way to Heidelberg?”

“Thought you was only keen on wee folk,” Prue said. Her throat was scratchy from screaming. “Didn’t know you fancied a college education to boot.”

Gertie sniffed. “I have more education in my little toe than you’ve got in that silly head of yours. And, although it is none of your concern, it turns out that this laboratory houses vital additions to my research. Not that you two court jesters could comprehend that.”

“Why did you stop here at Winkler’s laboratory?” Prue asked. “Shouldn’t you be making a beeline to wherever that ripped-out page says Snow White is buried?”

“How do you know”—Gertie’s voice rose in pitch—“about the page?”

Prue shrugged. Hansel stayed silent.

“Of course I wish to locate Snow White’s burial treasure,” Gertie said.

Treasure
?

Prue’s jaw dropped, and she felt Hansel tense.

“How did you learn about the . . . treasure?” Hansel said.

He was bluffing.

“From that tapeworm Franz. When he had the indecency to wrangle with me over the manuscript at the library this morning, he let slip that it is not Snow White’s remains that interest him, but the treasure that lies with her.”

“So,” Prue said, “you mean to swipe the treasure for yourself? It don’t belong to you.”

“Did the Rosetta Stone belong to the British troops who secured it? To the victor, you little dunce, go the spoils. Besides, I need the funds. I cannot bear another day of wiping spittle from that old biddy’s mouth or listening to her eternal hacking. Have you any idea how much money my father invested in my education? And yet I’ve been playing nurse to Miss Upton for four years. Four! Paid companion? More like selling your soul to an archfiend in a wicker wheelchair.” Gertie was rocking her weight from foot to foot. “This laboratory itself,” she continued, “is a treasure. A treasure of scientific value. I had heard rumors of it for years. I could not pass up an opportunity to see it, since I happened to find myself in Heidelberg.”

“
Happened
to?” Prue said. “I reckon you came straight here, once Franz told you about them old fairy tale books in the university library. I reckon you’ve been poking through these crates and things for days.”

Gertie sniffed.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Prue said.

“We merely want,” Hansel said, “the stolen page from the manuscript. Then we shall leave you to snoop through Professor Winkler’s rubbish to your heart’s content.”

“Rubbish?” Gertie sputtered.
“Rubbish?”
Her voice had reached a hysterical octave. She swung around, marched to the high window between two of the shelves, and snapped open the shade. Sunlight streamed across the counter.

Prue stared at the clutter, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Not straightaway. In front of her was a paperboard box filled with tiny shoes. Not baby shoes; shoes small enough to fit a newborn kitten, with curled-up pointy toes. There were also corked jars filled with dirt and rocks and brownish, shrivelly things. A vial of what seemed to be dried peas, another vial of thorns, and a larger glass vat filled with straw. Some delicate, winged things pinned in flat boxes, like butterflies. Except they weren’t butterflies, because they had tiny, dried-up people faces and limbs, and they wore clothes the color and texture of dried leaves.

Could those be . . .
fairies
?

Then there was a box of sharp teeth, like a wolf’s, and a bottle of dollhouse-size gold coins. There were a lot of gold odds and ends, actually: pocket watches, a gold-embroidered purse, a golden apple, a gold spindle. There was a pair of old-fashioned, red silk lady’s shoes, a box of goose feathers, three spinning wheels in a corner, and, hanging on the wall, what appeared to be a big, dried fish’s tail. Considering the state of affairs, Prue reckoned it must’ve been sawed off a mermaid.

Ugh.

The worst thing of all was the large, corked glass jar of brine in the middle of the table. Something that looked a lot like a gnome bobbed inside. Its little pointed hat floated at the surface of the liquid.

Every container had a label with a single word printed on it in blue, spidery ink:
Fictus
.

“What in tarnation is this stuff?” Prue said. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the gnome. “And what does
fictus
mean?”

Hansel tried to reply, but he only emitted a scratchy croak. He cleared his throat. “Hoax,” he said. “
Fictus
means hoax in Latin. Winkler is the famous fairy tale professor, recall.”

“Fairy tale professor, my foot,” Gertie said. She shoved something around in her copious bodice. “He labeled every last bit of scientific evidence in this laboratory a hoax. How is he capable of conducting proper fairy tale research if he believes it all to be humbug and chicanery? I believe
Winkler
is the hoax! Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She strode towards the door.

“Halt!” Hansel cried.

“Go to hell,” Gertie said over her shoulder.

Prue ran over and leapt on Gertie’s back. It was like mounting a dray horse attired in dun-colored linen. Gertie didn’t collapse to the floor, as Prue had hoped. Instead, she spun around in circles, writhing, trying to fling Prue off.

Prue clung with tenacity. They went around and around. Prue’s legs whirled out like a rag doll’s. Gertie’s satchel whirled out, too. Gertie staggered against one of the shelves, and a wooden crate slammed to the floor. Glass vials splintered across the floorboards. Filled with fake dragon’s scales, maybe, or Sleeping Beauty’s dried snot.

“It’s in her bodice!” Prue shouted to Hansel, on the next spin around.

Hansel looked like a deer cornered by a steam tractor.

“Her bodice!” Prue yelled. “The missing page! Get it while I’ve still got her!”

“You haven’t
got
me,” Gertie snarled. She clawed at Prue’s fingers, trying to peel her off. Prue dug in deep.

Hansel inched closer. He made a few lunges, but Gertie kept flailing out of his reach.

“Don’t be such a—a
gentleman
, Hansel!” Prue shouted. “Get the page! Grab her right in the doorknobs!”

Hansel blanched.

Prue was going to have to take matters into her own hands. No way was Mister Chivalrous here going to leap on a lady.

Prue squeezed her eyes shut, reached around, and dug out the folded page, which was luckily sticking out from between a couple of buttons.

Gertie roared.

Prue hopped to her feet. She was soaked in sweat—
whose
sweat she didn’t want to think about. She unfolded the page. Gertie was gearing up for another round; Prue saw her out of the corner of her eye, fists balled, shoulders rising and falling.

It truly was the last page from the library book. There was the black ink script that Prue couldn’t decipher. But the picture was clear as day: Snow White, eyes shut, hands folded over her breast, lying in a glass coffin.

“What’s she in?” Prue said. “Looks like an empty white chamber.”

Gertie snatched at the page. Prue whisked it out of her grasp and passed it to Hansel.

Hansel scanned it while Prue blocked Gertie’s path. “It says that Snow White lived to be very old,” he said, “and when she died, she was, at her request, buried with the seven dwarf miners with whom she had spent the happiest days of her life.”

“But where are the seven dwarf miners buried?” Prue said.

“You haven’t,” Gertie said, ripping the page from Hansel’s fingers, “even a speck of a brain in that cranium of yours, have you? Just an empty dolly’s head covered in yellow curls.”

Prue planted her hands on her hips. “The gumption of you, Miss Gertie Darling. Why, you’ve got enough yellow hair—and enough
other
things, too, but I wasn’t going to mention them—for two ladies put together.”

“Is that an allusion,” Gertie said through clenched teeth, “to my statuesque figure?”

“It’s an allusion to them things some might mistake for steam-powered warships—”

Hansel stepped between them. “Do you mean to suggest,” he said to Gertie, “that you know where the seven dwarves are buried?”

Gertie rolled her lashless eyes. “The location would be obvious to all but the haziest of intellects.” She folded the page and stuffed it back in her bodice. “Good-bye.” At the door, she paused, as though she’d just remembered something. She fished an item out of her leather satchel.

A revolver.