“What is it?” Stoker hurried to my side as I reached into the bag with nerveless fingers. “What in the name of the seven devils is that?”
I lifted out what was—mercifully—not a face, but a canvas mask, fully painted with features, including a pair of dark moustaches. “It is a climbing mask,” I told him in some relief. “I read about them in Alice’s notes. Some alpinists wear them to protect the skin from the sun at altitude.” I turned it over in my hands.
“Yelena is no climber,” Stoker pointed out. “So what is she doing with that thing?”
I stared down at the monstrous thing, looking for all the world like a trophy, a visage peeled away from a defeated foe.
And suddenly I knew.
“Alice’s death. That mysterious moustachioed man on the slopes of the Teufelstreppe,” I began.
I did not have to finish. “My God,” Stoker breathed. “The murderer used it to conceal his features. He must have been known—too well-known to risk anyone recognizing him.”
“Most likely not Durand, then. This points to the duke,” I reasoned.
“What if Gisela found this?” he asked. “Max already had a worthy motive to put Gisela out of the way to gain a throne for himself. If he murdered Alice and the princess discovered his guilt, then he would be stupid not to remove her.”
“Or he might have done it at her behest,” I pointed out. “Without Gisela here to answer for herself, there is no way to know if she is author of a plot or its victim.”
“And if Yelena discovered it among his things, she would recognize a tidy opportunity to blackmail him for money to keep quiet. Yet another desperate turn of the rack screw on a man already pushed to his limits.”
He folded the mask and tucked it into his shirt for safekeeping before moving on to Max’s trunks. He poked idly through the silk linings and boot compartments. “Nothing here,” he said in a tone of marked disappointment.
I passed to the chancellor’s boxes. Some were locked and marked with his cipher—no doubt for the storage of confidential papers and valuables, although the costliest items, the parures of the princess’s jewels, were secured in the locked strongbox in the princess’s bedchamber. I carried on, opening the baroness’s bags. There was precious little inside them, I realized as I searched. A bit of spilt face powder, a lace shoe with a broken heel and its mate, tied together with a bit of ribbon. No doubt they were favorites and meant for the cobbler to be mended.
I closed her boxes with a huff of annoyance. I had been so certain we would find something of note, I reflected peevishly.
“Veronica,” Stoker said in a slightly strangled voice.
“What is it?” I asked as I opened a hamper of tinned Alpenwalder delicacies. I pulled a face at the pickled cabbage and pungently aged cheese.
“Come and see this,” he said.
“I am rather busy,” I told him as I opened a box of cheese experimentally and gave it a sniff. I reared back as if I had been struck. It was utterly vile. Little wonder Julien d’Orlande did not like it in his kitchens.
“Veronica, now,” Stoker ordered.
I turned, prepared to give him a piece of my mind for his peremptory tone when I saw his face. It was set in a grim expression as he stared down into a trunk marked BOOKS. I went to him, but I knew. Of course I knew. Before I looked down into the open trunk and saw her, nestled there amidst the magazines and books that had been tucked neatly around her, I smelled her—the faint, unmistakable fragrance of death.
Yelena.
* * *
• • •
Of course she is dead,” I said, striving for calm. “I mean, we knew it, did we not?”
Stoker did not reply. With a surgeon’s practiced eye, he was surveying the body.
“How?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Poison? There are no visible marks of a weapon. Ah,” he said, bending swiftly. He tugged aside the collar of her dress to reveal a livid line of dark violet. “Strangulation, I would guess from the bruises,” he said, bending to examine her hands. “No indication that she struggled, so whoever attacked her did it swiftly and with strength. She had no chance, poor girl.”
I had not liked Yelena, but the thought of her, caught unawares by someone, struggling for breath, vision narrowing to a pinprick of light in the darkness and then . . . nothing. It was ghastly.
Stoker lifted her gently, and as he did so, a length of white silk was revealed. I slid my hand under her body to pull it free. It was heavily creased, and Stoker regarded it with a practiced eye. “Possibly the murder weapon,” he said grimly. “The width fits the bruising around her throat.”
I held the silk in my hands. It ought to have been cool from lying under Yelena’s dead body, but I fancied it was still warm, warm from strangling the life out of her.
“I know who did this,” I told him.
He glanced at the label on the trunk. “It is Maximilian’s case.”
“This is the riband of St. Otthild. And Maximilian was wearing his tonight. As was the chancellor. And who would need a mask with painted moustaches to masquerade as a man?”
He blinked at me. “But surely the baroness of all people would not—” Stoker began.
“Oh, but she did,” said a voice from the doorway. The baroness stood there, a small pistol in her hand, leveled at Stoker’s heart.
“Not again,” I muttered.
She smiled a mirthless smile. “You are rather prone to being the victims of homicidal attacks, are you not? You do have a penchant for putting yourself into dangerous situations. You see, you are not the only one capable of scientific inquiry, Miss Speedwell. I have made it my business to discover a few things about you.”
“Things that are supposed to be confidential,” I told her.
She shrugged. “Intelligence matters are often shared between allies.”
I glanced at Stoker. “I thought our activities were not a part of the official record.”
“They are not. But there will always be those who gossip, no matter how discreetly, and your activities have given you a reputation for fecklessness,” the baroness affirmed.
“Fecklessness! We are never feckless,” I told her coldly. “We are full to the brim with feck. Now, kindly put down your weapon and let us discuss this like rational people. It is obvious that you strangled Yelena after murdering Alice Baker-Greene. You might yet redeem yourself if you reveal what you have done with the princess.”
“I have no idea where the princess is,” she returned. “If I did, I would be infinitely happier.” She cocked her head like a bright little bird, the light glinting on her monocle, and gave a brisk twitch of the weapon. “Now, I have the gun, which means I am in command here. Miss Speedwell, you will remove your clothing, down to your chemise. I apologize for the indelicacy, but it is the only way to be certain that you are not armed. You will be quick about it.” I glanced at the door, wondering what had become of Durand.