Snow White Red-Handed (A Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery) by Maia Chance Page B

account for Frau Herz’s reticence. But there he was, thinking like one of those awful nobs who suspected the servants were forever after the silver teaspoons—
    There was a snap of twigs.
    Fancy running into a bear when he hadn’t got his gun.
    He caught a movement in the trees, a metallic glimmer. Silently, he stepped behind a tree trunk.
    It wasn’t a bear. It was the woodsman, Herz, prowling through the undergrowth.
    Odd. He hadn’t a torch to light his way, and he wasn’t on the track.
    And—Gabriel observed him a few seconds more—he wasn’t heading home, towards the rear gatehouse. No, he was traipsing deeper into the wood, and he had a rifle on his shoulder.
    Gabriel decided to follow him. Perhaps Herz would lead him to the secret that the Schilltag folk were so eager to keep hidden.
    *   *   *
    Gabriel had been a lieutenant in the cavalry during the Crimean War. He’d led scouting missions many times. So creeping through an ink-shadowed forest in pursuit of an armed and disgruntled man did not faze him quite as much as it ought to have.
    He didn’t dwell upon that, however, as he was led deeper and deeper into the trees. He was too intent on keeping sight of Herz, and on keeping his own footfalls silent.
    Herz was nothing more than a black shape up ahead, blending in and out of still blacker shadows. Now and then, the steel barrel of his rifle flashed.
    After about twenty minutes, Gabriel stepped on a rotten log. It collapsed under his weight. The undergrowth crackled.
    Up ahead, Herz froze.
    Gabriel held his breath, watching as Herz turned his head from side to side, listening.
    Presently, Herz set forth again.
    After a few heartbeats, Gabriel followed.
    They were passing a stream that gurgled alongside a vertical, fern-covered bluff. By Gabriel’s calculations, they were heading to the northwest, away from the castle and Schilltag. The cottage was directly west of the castle, and Gabriel estimated that they had passed it already. Where was Herz going, then?
    And, for that matter—where was Herz?
    Gabriel stopped. He’d lost sight of the woodsman, and he couldn’t hear anything but the splashing stream and the sighing tree branches. He took a step, towards an opening in the trees, and another and another.
    Something clamped his leg with shocking force. He cried out, collapsing sideways into a damp cluster of ferns.
    His left calf was caged inside a steel trap.
    Thank God he was wearing tall stovepipe boots. And the trap did not, like most bear traps, have steel teeth; its jaws were padded with leather.
    Which suggested—Gabriel gritted his teeth against blinding bursts of pain—that the trap was not for animals at all.
    It was a man trap.
    The shadowy undergrowth parted. His gaze traveled up the barrel of Herz’s rifle.

9

    “P
rue.”
    Prue jerked her head up. She was sprawled facedown on the lumpy ticking mattress, dozing. It wasn’t late, but she only had a candle, and anyway, she sure didn’t intend to peruse the Bible someone had put in the tower. It didn’t have a single picture, even.
    “Prue.”
    Hansel! Her heart pitter-pattered. She scrambled to her feet and dashed to the window.
    “Hello,” she whispered into the darkness.
    Hansel was just a smudge of gray in the garden. “Did you enjoy the pastries I sent along on your tray with Freda?”
    “Yes. And the biscuits, too, and the sausages. Oh—and the Turkish delight.” Ma would be shocked. She always said a lady should give the impression of watching her figure in front of a gentleman, even if it meant stuffing her face like a carpetbag later on. But then, Hansel wasn’t really a gentleman.
    “I have come,” he whispered, “to tell you what I have learned.”
    “They going to let me out?”
    “Not yet. But something strange has occurred. All of those things that were removed from the house in the wood yesterday by the two professors and taken to the castle library—all of those things have gone