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Miss Ophelia Flax is a Victorian actress who knows all about making quick changes and even quicker exits. But to solve a fairy-tale crime in the haunted Black Forest, she'll need more than a bit of charm... 1867: After being fired from her latest variety hall engagement, Ophelia acts her way into a lady's maid position for a crass American millionaire. But when her new job whisks her off to a foreboding castle straight out of a Grimm tale, she begins to wonder if her fast-talking ways might have been too hasty. The vast grounds contain the suspected remains of Snow White's cottage, along with a disturbing dwarf skeleton. And when her millionaire boss turns up dead--poisoned by an apple--the fantastic setting turns into a once upon a crime scene. To keep from rising to the top of the suspect list, Ophelia fights through a bramble of elegant lies, sinister folklore, and priceless treasure, with only a dashing but mysterious scholar as her ally. And as the clock ticks towards midnight, she'll have to break a cunning killer's spell before her own time runs out...
**Praise for *Snow White Red-Handed
*
“Offering a clever twist on the tales of the Brothers Grimm, this debut historical cozy (and series launch) introduces an attractive, spunky heroine…and an entertaining, well-constructed plot that will satisfy fans of folklore and fairy tales.”—Library Journal (starred review)
 
“Deliciously Gothic, intriguingly different, this story plunges us into the world of Brothers Grimm fairy tales, where the greed and evil are all too real, and everyone has something to hide.”—Rhys Bowen,* New York Times *bestselling author
 
“[Chance’s] lively debut, the first in a new cozy series…will whet the reader’s appetite for Ophelia and Prue’s next misadventure.”—Publishers Weekly
Autorentext
Maia Chance
Leseprobe
She drew the slipper from her cloak. Her eyes, adjusting to the thin moonlight, picked out the faintest of shapes on a path between two rows of trees. Could they be . . . footprints?
1
SS Leviathan
Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean
August 1867
Miss Ophelia Flax was neither a professional confidence trickster nor a lady’s maid, but she’d played both on the stage. In desperate circumstances like these, that would have to do.
“Who told you that our maid Marie gave notice?” Mrs. Coop said. Her diamond earrings wobbled.
Miss Amaryllis, sitting beside Mrs. Coop on the sofa, sniffed and added, “Uppity French tart.”
If ever there were two wicked stepsisters, here they were, taking tea in the SS Leviathan’s stuffy first-class stateroom number eighteen: thick-waisted, brassy-haired Mrs. Coop, clutching at her fading bloom in a deshabille gown of pink ribbons and Brussels lace, and her much younger sister Miss Amaryllis, a bony damsel of twenty or so with complexion spots, slumped shoulders, and a green silk gown that resembled a lampshade. They looked up at Ophelia, expectant and hostile.
Ophelia stood before them, tall and plain in the gray woolen traveling dress, black gloves, and prim buttoned boots she’d borrowed—stolen was such a rotten word—from the costume trunks of Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties in the ship’s hold.
“Your maid’s abandonment of her post,” Ophelia said, “came to my attention during my midday promenade on the first-class deck.”
She needn’t mention that her own cramped berth was in the bowels of third class, where it stank of sour cabbage and you felt the ship’s engines vibrating in your teeth.
“Embarrassing scene.” Mrs. Coop pitched herself forward to reach for a cream puff. “The way Marie threw her apron at me! She always did behave as though she were my—my superior.”
“It wasn’t your fault, ma’am,” Ophelia said. “French maids are notoriously fickle. They’re not the best for service, I’m afraid.”
“But everyone in New York’s got one. They’re simply mad for them.”
“It is my understanding, ma’am, that while a certain . . . class of society cling to the outdated notion that a French lady’s maid is the height of elegance, the Van Der Snoots and De Schmeers and”—Ophelia scanned the stateroom’s luxurious furnishings—“St. Armoire ladies have of late discovered that a Yankee lady’s maid is best.”
“Yankee?” Mrs. Coop’s bitten cream puff hovered in midair. Yellowish filling oozed from the sides.
“Yes, ma’am. Yankee girls are honest, hardworking, modest, and loyal.”
Miss Amaryllis slitted her eyes. “I suppose you’re a Yankee girl?”
“Indeed I am. Born and bred on a farmstead in New Hampshire, miss.”
That was true. She’d leave out the bits about the textile mill and the traveling circus. They didn’t have the same wholesome ring.
“I’ll find a new maid when we reach Germany,” Mrs. Coop said. “I’ve made up my mind. Why, if I had known Marie would quit in the midst of my honeymoon voyage, I’d have left her on the dock in Manhattan!”
“Another virtue of Yankee girls,” Ophelia said, “is their ability to arrange coiffures, make cosmetic preparations, and, if needed—although I’m certain ma’am has no need—apply powders and tints with a hand as subtle as nature herself.”
A lie, of course. But Ophelia was an actress—or she had been up until four hours ago, when Howard DeLuxe had given Prue the boot and Ophelia had been obliged to quit—and putting on greasepaint was one thing she knew how to do well.
“Yankee girls use face paint?” Mrs. Coop said. “Why, you said it yourself. They’re as plain as potatoes.”
“But they learned from their grandmothers, ma’am, the arts of medicinal plants. My own gran taught me to whip up an elderflower tincture that returns the skin to snowy youth—”
Another fib. But Mrs. Coop’s eyes glimmered with interest.
“—and a Pomade Victoria of beeswax and almond oil that makes the hair shine like gold, a salve of Balsam Peru that makes complexion spots vanish.” Ophelia leaned forward. “I could not help noticing Miss Amaryllis’s unfortunate condition.”
“Why, the cheek!” Mrs. Coop’s bosom heaved.
Miss Amaryllis glared up at Ophelia and bit into a biscuit with a snap.
“And,” Ophelia said, “a pleasant-tasting tonic of vinegar that slims a lady’s waist without effort.”
Mrs. Coop’s half-eaten cream puff plopped onto her plate.
Ophelia had hooked her halibut.
“Here,” Ophelia said, drawing two sealed envelopes from her pocket, “are my letters of reference. I, and my young acquaintance, Miss Prudence Bright, were traveling to England to work in the employ of Lady Cheshingham at Greyson Hall in Shropshire.”
Lady Cheshingham was, in truth, the lead character in the risqué comedy Lady Cheshingham’s Charge, which Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties had performed in May. The letters were forgeries Ophelia had penned an hour earlier.
Mrs. Coop fingered the envelopes. “Ah, yes, yes, Lady Cheshingham.”
“While already shipboard, I belatedly read a missive I’d received from Lord Cheshingham on the eve of our voyage, which informed me that the lady had passed away.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yes. A tragedy. She was so young.”
“I had heard so many wonderful things about her.”
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