Chapter Thirty-five

When we reached the village crossroads, the castle came into view—a startling sight, with lights beaming from most of the windows.

The dark houses around us would not remain that way for long. A man with a lamp was hurrying up the path to the village telegraph office.

My feet slowed to a halt outside the sagging gate of the derelict house. “Holmes, I…we need to check.”

He stayed with me as I crossed its weed-grown yard, walked across the room, and lifted the lid of the large storage bin.

It was empty, but for a crushed allium flower and the visceral sweep of memories raised by the smell of dust and dank. I shivered; Holmes touched my arm, and we left.

The castle was like an ants’ nest. Alarmed footmen poured down the stairway with electric torches, paraffin lanterns, and enough makeshift truncheons for a small war. When we had successfully navigated against this tide, we found the female staff milling about the courtyard, hastily dressed and not far from panic. The cook had seized a rolling pin as she came through her domain, and looked more than competent to put down a revolt all on her own.

The men who had poured past us were more or less oblivious to our presence, but here we were seized upon by the women, who demanded information, reassurance, and most of all, instruction.

I pulled myself up to my full height and held up one placating hand. They subsided. “As you all no doubt know, Gabriela…I’m sorry, what is her last name?”

“Stoica,” said a chorus of voices, showing me which of my audience understood English.

“Thank you. Miss Stoica seems to have disappeared on her way home. The little gold cross she wears was found on the road near her house.” I took care to use the present tense, and waited until the murmur of translation died away. “Her family is there. The Queen’s men are out looking for her. The police have been called from Brașov. I am sure all the village will join the search. You might want to have food and drink when they return.”

This time, the translation was done on the move, as the gathering of women moved as one in the direction of the kitchen. I caught back one of them who had understood my words.

“We need to speak with the Queen. Would you take us, please?”

We followed her across and up to the Queen’s rooms. She slipped inside, but was back in moments to show us in. We found the Queen fully dressed, regal and in control. In front of her was a cup of tea. It was three o’clock in the morning.

I eyed the tray longingly, and suggested to the woman that coffee would be a lovely thing, once the kitchen had some brewing.

The moment the door shut, the Queen’s assured posture went stiff, her icy blue eyes locking on Holmes. “What is going on here? I wake to find the castle in turmoil and one of the girls gone missing. Is this in any way connected to why I brought you here?”

Holmes, pulling out a chair to indicate that the reply was going to be a long one, started things off. “Ma’am, since you returned to the vicinity on Thursday, beginning the night you were in Sinaia, Russell and I have been witness to a series of events designed to slander Your Majesty’s reputation. They are—”

“What events? Why have you not kept me informed?”

“Madam, it requires a series to shape a pattern, and at the beginning we did not have that. Later, we did not think you would wish to discuss matters in front of your daughter.”

“You should have come to me. That is why I hired you.”

The idea of Sherlock Holmes as a hireling raised an eyebrow. “Madam, I can either investigate, or I can deliver reports. I was under the impression that you wanted a rapid solution to the case, rather than ongoing chapters to a story.”

A lesser man would have grovelled, or perhaps melted down, under the force of her gaze—but Sherlock Holmes had turned that mildly amused face on kings, marshals, and imperial governors. It worked as well on this imperious woman as it had on every person I’d ever seen, with the possible exception of Mrs Hudson.

The Queen reached for her cup, and when she had given it an unnecessary stir, her outrage had been packed away.

He nodded, and explained that we had found indications that someone wanted to stoke rumours that the Queen of Roumania was engaging in unsavoury acts.

“ ‘Unsavoury acts’?” she said sharply. “Of what sort?”

“You know of the Countess Erzabet Báthory?”

The Queen’s face went pale. Clearly she had heard of the woman—and I was glad that Holmes did not have to go into details, particularly regarding the episode of the kitchen maid’s cut and the suggestive bowl of blood. This proud English aristocrat did not need to dwell on the idea that her people might believe her capable of bathing her skin in a virgin’s blood.

“Yes,” he said, “along those lines, although it would appear that here, your would-be antagonist is willing to seize on any convenient sin, from witchcraft to summoning the dead to having vampiric tendencies.”

She blinked. I knew how she felt.

“I say ‘would-be’ because in at least two of these episodes, Russell and I have intervened before the damning evidence could come to light.”

The coffee arrived, and with it a platter of hastily made but hearty sandwiches, equally welcome. The Queen took the opportunity to ask how the castle was faring, and asked her maid to convey her thanks to the kitchen, and assure them that they would hear any news as soon as the Queen did.

We waited until the door was closed before resuming.

“The first item appeared to be a witch’s hex bag.”

“That’s a little bag containing herbs and talismans,” I explained. “that witches are said to use when laying a curse.”

“It was left at the door to a chicken coop,” Holmes continued, “with a scoop of poisoned grain. Had the farmer let his hens out as usual, they’d have died. The hex bag would have pointed to a witch—and, more specifically, to you.”

“How?”

“The herbs this one contained were Earl Grey tea.”

She did not quite laugh, not with a missing girl at the fore of everyone’s mind, but the impulse was clear. Instead, she waved for him to go on.

“We then took a walk up into the hills to consult with an old witch-woman I came across there.”

“Mrs Varga?”

“You know her?”

“I ride all over these hills, so naturally I’ve met her. An odd woman, but harmless.”

I hoped she was right. I could not help remembering some of the old woman’s herbs, drying against her front door.

“Mrs Varga agreed that the bag was a sham, not something a real witch might have made.”

“Aimed, as you say, at creating rumours. Why did it not do so?”

Holmes glanced over at me. “Because a sleepless young woman noticed movement in the night. Then her husband followed some foot-prints to the chickens.”

“How fortunate.”

“Indeed.”

I picked up the story from there. “Then the next night, when you returned, one of the kitchen maids spoke to a dead man as she went home after dark. He claimed to be a local soldier, who was killed in the War. That of course was a long time before you came here, although he has family in the village and was one of Mr Florescu’s young protégées.”

“I believe this was one bit of gossip that did reach village ears,” she said.

“It did.”

“But what does any of it have to do with me? Ghosts, witches. The ‘Blood Countess.’ ”

“We haven’t yet figured that out,” I admitted. “Logic suggests it will be tied to you somehow, but we haven’t yet seen how, in anything but the most general of ways.”

“I trust this invisible adversary is not about to build a case that the soldier was my secret lover,” she said in a dry voice. “I am credited with rather too many of those as it is.”

“Um, well, no. Not that I’m aware. But since the boy was only sixteen, and he died four years before you came here, that would be a difficult claim to establish.”

“Mildly reassuring,” she murmured.

Holmes took us back on track. “Now, however, we have the disappearance of a young woman who has worked for you for some years. Madam, may we examine that pearl necklace you often wear?”

“My pearls? Certainly, though I do not know what they have to do with matters.”

She went out, returning a few minutes later with a sumptuous double-handful of lustrous balls. “I don’t often bring my real jewels to Bran,” she noted. “Both because I rarely hold formal parties here, but also because I prefer this place to be free of ceremony. Pearls are quite enough, for the most part.”

Holmes and I did not remark that these un-real jewels would pay for a very nice house in London. Instead, he laid them out on the table, close enough together that their marked similarity was displayed. When he sat back, I took out the pearl I had found on the ground and set it beside them.

It was duller, less perfect in shape, and though large in itself, decidedly smaller than any other one on the table.

“I found that a few feet away from Gabriela’s necklace,” I told her.

She did not protest, did not point out that it was nothing like hers. She did not need to. All three of us could see that, if a villager had found it first, any proof would have been as effective as a small boulder against a raging torrent.

A knock came at the door. I snatched up the stray pearl and Marie swept away the ropes, settling everything under our garments as the maid stepped in with a bob.

“Ma’am, there is a policeman here to see you. Inspector Dragomir? He says Mr Florescu sent for him.”

“Yes, thank you, Christina, bring him up.” When the door had closed, she turned to us. “Will you stay? To help me decide how much Mr Dragomir needs to know about all…this?”

“We would be happy to,” Holmes lied.

Personally, I was interested to see what a Transylvanian police inspector would look like. In fact…“Would you prefer that Holmes and I speak to him? Give him some of the same information we’ve given you?”

“Some of it?”

“Nothing personal, nothing touching on your daughter. But a plot against you, from within the village? It is a thing he should be aware of, as he organises the search for Gabriela.”

“I suppose you are right. And I have met this policeman, once or twice. He seemed to me a responsible sort, not like some. I have known policemen to sell information to the gossip papers, if you can believe that.”

We shook our heads at the sad decline of common decency, and went to divert the inspector from Brașov.

In my pocket—barely—was the Queen’s pearl necklace.