Follow My Lead (42 page)

“Well,” Frau Heider reasoned, “I am owed a holiday. Besides, I am keenly interested to learn if the young lady really was married to the nice young gentlemen she travelled with.”

When she said that, Totty could hear George’s teeth grinding.

And so, against George’s increased objections, the Dürer House was closed, shutters put up on the windows (this took an extra half day, as George told them more than once), and all the poor drunken students for the next several days would simply have to be disappointed.

The spot where the lad said Winn and the Duke had been dropped revealed little information, but at least it put them in the same direction as the objects of their pursuit. They travelled down the roads, toward Munich, and had stopped for the evening in a little village near the Austrian border before they discovered they had to turn around.

It was Frau Heider’s happiness to be among people that lead them in the right direction. While George was always eager to be conversational with men he felt the need to impress, he was not one to bother speaking to those he felt could not be of use, and so took a private dining room, where the rabble would not annoy him.

Totty, likewise, was one for the avoidance of rabble, and finding it best to keep an eye on George at this juncture, who was becoming increasingly on edge, ate with him.

She had just been sipping on the heaviest beer she’d sampled this side of Ireland when Frau Heider came through the dining room door with two pleasant looking, if working-class, men in her wake.

“Tell her what you just told me,” Frau Heider said, in her native tongue.

“We were at our sister’s, in the village of Lupburg, for the
Sonnenwende
festival,” the more egregiously smiling of the two gentlemen said, “and you’ll never guess what we saw.”

“No they never will, so I’ll tell you,” Frau Heider interjected. “They saw an English Duke cleaning out stables, and his companion lady being chased by the horses.”

Suddenly Totty’s beer tasted very sour indeed.

But Frau Heider was so pleased with herself and so happy to have been of use on the journey, that Totty had to wait until George, who popped out of his chair immediately at the news, was readying the horses to dampen her enthusiasm.

“My dear—the next time you discover something like this,” she said in a whisper, “come to me first, and me only.”

“But why?” Frau Heider asked wide-eyed.

“Because I feel it might be necessary to buy Winn and her friend some time to find what she’s looking for,” Totty reasoned, shooting a pointed look in George’s direction, who yelled in his agitated German at the slow pace of his loading of the trunks.

She turned back toward her new friend and found her nodding solemnly, looking somewhat fearful and heartbroken—so much so that Totty, in a manner quite unlike herself, felt the need to pacify her. “Never fear, you did no wrong. We will find them . . . but why such a rush? No reason we can’t be a bit leisurely about the matter, is there?”

But leisurely was not George’s state of mind. One would have thought that since Frau Heider was instrumental in discovering the direction of Winn and the Duke, George would have been more tolerant of her presence.

One would be wrong.

“Why do I feel certain this will be another waste of time,” George grumbled. “Coming back the way we came to follow a rumor?”

“It’s better than anything else we have, George,” Totty said pointedly. “Besides, the following of a rumor is simply another name for research . . . a skill your profession prizes, does it not?”

George settled against the cushions of the carriage and grumbled. But at least it stopped his glaring at Frau Heider.

The rumor of Lupburg boasted the true article, as everyone in town pointed them quickly in the direction of an inn owned by a man named Wurtzer.

And Wurtzer pointed them in the direction of Regensburg. Even gave them the name of the stable yard where they’d stopped next. Although, he felt he would not be able to tell them precisely where to find it and so decided it best that he himself accompany them in the carriage, to point out the exact turns to take to find Hohenfelser Strasse.

“After all,” the kind innkeeper reasoned, “I did not pay them the amount I owed them, and I would like to settle accounts. My beloved Heidi would not hear of me shortchanging the young lovers.”

While George’s expression darkened, Frau Heider’s expression—with whom Herr Wurtzer had been having the most enjoyable conversation—took on a more quizzical vulnerability. “Oh? You have a beloved Heidi?”

“
Da.
My daughter. My wife passed some years ago, I’m afraid.”

After that, a great deal of conversation was had between Frau Heider and Herr Wurtzer, in German rapid enough to be completely unfollowable by even the most fluent of the nonnative members of the quickly crowding carriage.

Regensburg pointed them to Linz, Austria. Totty did her best, with some assistance from Frau Heider (although truth be told, that lady was now very much engaged with Wurtzer), to require George to stop the carriage perhaps an hour earlier than he might normally, or that they make certain to have the horses’ shoes checked and then double-checked when hiring them. But they travelled on at a pace that made it seem as if they were bearing down upon Winn’s heels.

That is, of course, until they got to Linz. In Linz they had to look for clues. And it was in Linz that Totty found one.

And it was in Linz that everything changed.

They had been there for two days, unable to find any trace of Winn and her fictitious husband. They apparently had left the posting inn and disappeared into thin air. All inquiries at local inns and hotels yielded nothing, although that was considered a long shot to begin with, as Wurtzer had provided them with particulars of their financial state, or lack thereof.

“I cannot bear to think of the poor girl, sleeping out in the cold night!” Frau Heider cried, clutching Wurtzer’s arm tighter.

“She deserves it,” George growled, “for disobeying me.”

“What was that?” Totty replied, turning her quizzical gaze on George. And for once George did not turn away in chagrin. Instead, he met her gaze dead on, as if daring her to question him.

It was at a small pawnshop, on a row of shops and restaurants in the shadow of the Pöstlingberg Church’s double spires, that it happened. George had gone up the street, inquiring at a small dining room if they had seen a petite woman with a red-haired companion. Herr Wurtzer and Frau Heider had decided to wander up to Pöstlingberg Church, to see if Winn and the Duke had sought sanctuary there. And Totty had decided to do a little shopping.

Besides, what was a holiday across the Continent without collecting a few trinkets?

She was browsing the selection of trinkets, brass lockets, earrings, and the like, when she saw a beautiful gold ring. With a decidedly familiar insignia on it.

Now, Totty was not always the most observant creature. Her butler Leighton had more than once decried his mistress’s senses when she poured whiskey into a brandy snifter. But she had taken note of that ring, had in fact focused on it, as they drove from London to Dover, distracting herself from having to listen to George’s retching out the window.

“Where did you get this?” she asked the rotund proprietor behind the counter, in his own dialect.

The proprietor, smelling a customer, smiled ingratiatingly. “That belonged to an Austrian count in the Holy Roman Empire. It has been in my family for centuries. A truly priceless artifact.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Totty rebuffed him. “I know it’s English, and I know you purchased it within the past fortnight. But I don’t care. I will pay your advertised price if you tell me what you know about the man who sold it to you, and then forget you ever saw it, or him.”

The proprietor grinned lasciviously. After all, a desperate customer was far preferable to a stupid one.

“Oh, I do not know if I could part with it . . .”

Just then, on the fringes of her vision, she could see George’s hulking form through the window, stalking up the street toward the shop.

“Twice your price.” She turned to the proprietor, speaking in a hushed whisper as George threw open the door of the shop. “Just hide the ring, now!”

“Well, that was a waste of time,” George sneered, his face fixed in its perpetual scowl. “Find any trinkets for yourself? Or did you perhaps do something useful instead?”

“No, I don’t think I did. Nothing but junk in here. Shall we be off?” Totty said perhaps too brightly.

“Wait . . . what is that?” George said, his shrewd vision catching the proprietor shuffling the tray of trinkets from the display to a shelf below.

“Nothing, George,” Totty tried again, but he would not be deterred.

“Bring it out,” he told the proprietor. “Bring. It. Out,” he growled, and the smaller man did so.

Just then, as George was sifting through the items, Herr Wurtzer and Frau Heider came through the shop door, setting its bell jangling.

“There was nothing at the church,” Frau Heider cried, “but there was a lovely cart selling meat pies on our way out, and—”

“What is this?” George interrupted, the ring in his hand. “This is Rayne’s ring! How could you miss it?”

“I, ah—” Totty tried, but it was of no use.

“There is no possible way you would have missed it. You meant to hide it from me,” George surmised. He held it up to her face, his fingers shaking with the pressure of restraint.

“Now, Herr Bambridge,” Frau Heider jumped into the silence. “She wouldn’t have hidden it from you. Not forever.”

“Not forever?” George asked, now actively stalking forward, forcing Totty to take steps backward. “Not forever. Which means you would have for a time. Maybe once Winn had found that proof that she’s looking all over the Continent for, you would have revealed it? Maybe once we were back in England and I am in
disgrace
?”

“Now, George, stop it!” Totty said forcefully. But this time . . . no, this time George was not going to be shamed into propriety.

“I will not stop it! You have been holding me back with your
coddling
this entire journey!
You
have been trying to stop me from finding Winnifred, and
you
have involved these hangers-on”—he threw his arm out at their friends, knocking over a vase in his anger but not caring—“in your schemes! And therefore you are to blame for what happens to her now.”

“George don’t be ridiculous—” Totty tried, ignoring the belly-deep fear that George—who she had seen grow from a boy into the angry oversized man before her—was igniting inside of her. But she shouldn’t have ignored it, because George was past reasoning. With one swipe of his great paw, he struck Totty across the face, throwing her into a glass lamp and crashing her to the ground.

The horrified cries of the gathered party echoed in Totty’s ears as the light faded in and out in front of her eyes, colors stirring with dark.

“Oh shut up, all of you!” George yelled, a stuttering panic in his voice. Then Totty could hear a shuffling as he leaned over the counter, and a thunk and cry as he pulled the proprietor to him by the collar. “Now, you will tell me
exactly
what you know about this ring.” And then the light faded away entirely.

Totty came to with a splitting headache, and Frau Heider bending over her.

“Oh, she’s awake! Günter, she’s awake!” Frau Heider cried, bringing Herr Wurtzer to her side.

“Where is he?” she asked, trying to sit up and finding it impossible, as the whole world spun. “Oh—this is the worst hangover I’ve ever had.”

“Don’t try to move,” Frau Heider said. “You have a cut under your hair from the glass, and a large bump. There was even blood—we were so frightened for you. Herr Bambridge is gone. Günter tried to restrain him but—” She shrugged, which was all the explanation for why a sixty-year-old man was not able to stop one half his age who happened to have the size and strength of a gorilla.

“You couldn’t have hidden that ring any quicker?” she said to the proprietor, who was anxiously wringing his hands. Totty couldn’t blame him. Having an Englishwoman die in your shop is not good for business.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. I . . . He made me tell him what I knew. That the man asked for an amount that would get him to Vienna. But he was agitated, and I ended up shorting him, he only got—”

“Yes, yes,” Totty replied, waving her hand in the air. “I just can’t believe that I was struck.”

“Neither can we,” Frau Heider said. “I . . . something is wrong with that man. Totty. . . . He . . . Herr Bambridge . . . he took a pistol. From the glass case over there. I believe he has gone mad.”

“If he hasn’t yet, he will by the time I’m through with him,” Totty said darkly. Then, turning to the proprietor, “You. Fetch me ink and paper. And a drink. When I’m done with George Bambridge, he won’t know what hit
him
.”