Cinderella Six Feet Under(98)

Penrose came to Ophelia. “No luck.”

“He didn’t buy your line about wishing to borrow a cufflink?”

“I’m afraid not, and he was rather suspicious that I had asked. We’ve never met, you realize.”

“Did you see the trunk?”

“He blocked my view.”

“Then we must wait till he leaves, and then go in.”

“You’re determined to do this?”

“The last time I saw him he was waving a meat cleaver at me!”

“Fair enough.”

They hid behind the vase for more than twenty minutes. At last, Malbert’s door opened. They looked around the vase. Malbert waddled down the corridor in the opposite direction, pulling his traveling trunk behind him. Wheels were affixed to the bottom and Malbert held it by a hand strap. The wheels squeaked softly.

“What in Godfrey’s green earth?” Ophelia whispered. “I knew he was up to something. I knew it!”

They crept along after Malbert, through a puzzle of richly decorated corridors and into a bare, spiraling stairwell. Malbert took great care to gently bump the trunk down each step. On the ground floor, a door led outside. Malbert had left it ajar.

He was setting off across a twilit side garden when Ophelia and Penrose dared to look out the door.

“Where is he going?” Penrose murmured.

“Hopefully not to bury anything.” Ophelia swallowed. “Or anyone.” She sure as sheep-dip didn’t want to see that.

Malbert wheeled the trunk swiftly through the network of low, geometrical hedges and sandy paths. Ophelia and Penrose skulked at a distance. The sun was below the horizon now, and Malbert was a black blotch. But if he were to turn around, there wasn’t a place to hide.

Ophelia heard crunching footfalls behind them. She glanced over her shoulder to see two other black blotches, walking beside a fountain.

Penrose had seen them, too. “Keep on,” he whispered. “I fancy they’re only out for a stroll.”

Malbert veered to the side and disappeared through an archway cut into a tall line of shrubbery.

“Bother,” Penrose said. “We’ll lose him. Hurry.”

Ophelia and Penrose passed under the archway through which Malbert had disappeared, and emerged at the top of a terraced slope. At the bottom of the terraces, a ring of bare trees stood out against the purple sky. Behind the trees, a lake shone like a large, tarnished coin. Cold wind gusted up.

“There he is!” Ophelia pointed. Malbert was gently bumping his trunk down the steps.

Once Malbert reached the bottom, he headed towards the lakeshore and vanished into a dark clump of weeping willows.

When Ophelia and Penrose reached the shore, the sky had deepened to indigo. Frogs peeped, water lapped, and tall reeds rustled in the breeze. From the clump of willows came crunching sounds. Then the sounds stopped.

Ophelia and Penrose crept behind a thick willow trunk and peered around it.

At first, Ophelia saw nothing but blurs of gray and black. But she stared harder and made out the form of Malbert. He knelt before the trunk. He opened the lid, its hinges creaking.

“Adieu, mes mignons,” Malbert murmured in a singsong tone. “Adieu.”

Ophelia forgot to breathe.

Penrose shook with silent laughter.

Ophelia frowned. Malbert was placing tiny things onto the ground. Tiny things that streamed away into the shadows, one by one.

“Mice?” Ophelia whispered.

“Qui est là?” Malbert asked, scrambling to his feet.

Penrose stepped out from behind the tree. Ophelia decided she may as well follow. Malbert wasn’t a murderer. He was only . . . off his rocker.

“Lord Harrington, is it? Why have you followed me here? I knew you were not being honest when you said you wished to borrow a cufflink. And who is this young lady with you?” Malbert’s spectacles shone like little moons.

“Miss Stonewall and I were merely out for a stroll, and we happened to notice you and your rather fascinating wheeled trunk. I confess that our curiosity got the better of us. I do beg your pardon. Releasing mice?”

Malbert dabbed his face with a hankie. “Please do not tell my daughters. They will laugh. But you see, my home is infested with the poor little creatures and I cannot bear to destroy them. I take away the poison and the deadly traps my servants set out for them, and catch them instead with traps of my own design and manufacture that will not harm them—”