Cinderella Six Feet Under (18 page)

“She says that she wrote to the police, to someone called Inspector Foucher, and informed him of Sybille's identity, but he never replied. She begs that you stay at the convent, where you will be safe, until the murderer is caught.”

“Bunk in a convent?”
How Ma would laugh at
that
one.
“I'll be just fine—as long as your grandmother and Hume leave me be.”

Sister Alphonsine looked like she wished to say more, but after a long hesitation she crunched away on the path. She stole one last look over her shoulder before she swished out of sight around a tomb.

“Are you ready to go?” Dalziel asked. “Her talk of murderers has made me feel wary. I ought not keep you out any longer.”

Prue gazed one last time at Sybille's headstone. “I'm ready.”

D
alziel ordered the driver—a hired driver, not Lord and Lady Cruthlach's—to go to Hôtel Malbert by way of the Pensionnat Sainte Estelle.

The nunnery was on a corner: a tall, spiked iron fence and bare bushes, with a blocky stone building behind.

“If the occasion should arise that you needed to know of its location,” Dalziel said.

“You ought to train to be a lawyer,” Prue muttered.

“I intend to, once I have completed my studies at the Sorbonne.” Dalziel smiled.

His smile was too fetching, and Prue flicked her gaze out the window. She had no business admiring Dalziel's beautiful black eyes and white teeth. She was in love with Hansel. Wasn't she?

Ma had always said,
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
. Well actually, she'd said a
man
in the hand (and then she'd trill with laughter). Was Prue's admiration for Dalziel proof that she was becoming . . . just like Ma?

When Prue knocked on the front door of Hôtel Malbert because there was no other way to get in, Baldewyn opened it. Lucky he never asked questions. He only looked a little shirty. Prue bolted upstairs.

Sleep came hard. Prue shivered, even with the fat ginger cat purring like a locomotive on top of her and a nice coal fire winking in the grate. She couldn't stop seeing Sybille's headstone, all mixed up with the jerky motions and pearl-tooth grins of a dozen windup Cinderellas.

*   *   *

Gabriel bade Miss
Flax farewell and watched her crawl through a sidewalk-level window into the cellar of Hôtel Malbert. He would have liked to help her, but she insisted upon doing it herself. There was a thump—had she fallen?—and then she lifted up a hand to the window in farewell.

No other lady in the world was quite like Miss Flax.

Gabriel turned up the collar of his greatcoat and began the long walk to his hotel.

*   *   *

Ophelia propped her
feet on the grate in her bedchamber. The heat relieved her cold, crunched toes. It was near midnight, she estimated, but sleep would not come. After she'd clambered back through the cellar window (it had been most humiliating to have the professor watch her do
that
), she had checked on Prue and the ginger cat—both sound asleep—and readied herself for bed. She'd heard Malbert and the stepsisters noisily arrive. After that, the house fell silent.

Malbert and the stepsisters had been at the opera house tonight. Each one of them might have a reason to kill for the stomacher. After all, it was their family heirloom. Ophelia was only a little comforted by the notion that the murderer wouldn't do Prue or her any harm, since it was the stomacher the murderer was after. Still, being under the same roof as that bunch was downright eerie.

Ophelia mulled things over. There had to be something she'd missed, some crucial ingredient that would make it all firm up and set, like calf's-foot jelly in fruit preserves.

There was the lawyer. They hadn't been able to speak with him, and Ophelia had never managed to have a cozy chat with Malbert in order to extract any divorce secrets. But other than that, all of this business about the ballet and the Cinderella stomacher? Befuddling.

Except.

Except Malbert always seemed removed, as though the events around him did not quite touch him. But what if he were really the center of it all? Henrietta, after all, was
his
wife. Sybille's corpse had been found just outside
his
workshop. The stomacher that everyone was so interested in belonged by rights to Malbert, and had come from
his
bank box. Malbert had even had the opportunity, perhaps, to shoot Caleb Grant at the opera house tonight.

Ophelia sat forward. What was it Austorga had said at the exhibition this afternoon? Something about Malbert and inventions? Oh, yes: something like,
Danger is the price one pays for scientific advancement
.

Danger.
Sybille had met with danger, and so had Caleb Grant.

Yes. It was high time Ophelia took a gander at Malbert's workshop.

She lit a taper, drew on her shawl, and tiptoed though dark corridors and stairs to his workshop. She knocked softly on the door, but there was no reply. Good thing, too, since she wasn't in her Mrs. Brand disguise.

She twisted the knob. It gave.

Well. Surely if Malbert stored diabolical things in his workshop, he'd keep the door locked.

Inside, wet wax extinguished her taper. Smoke and darkness filled her eyes. She should've brought spare matches.

She blinked. Her eyes adjusted. The draperies were open, admitting fragile moonbeams that glinted off bits of metal on the table. When Ophelia had spied upon Malbert through the window last week, her impression had been of piles of mechanical disarray. Now she saw that the piles were sorted: springs in one, bolts in another, and so on. She squinted. There certainly
could
be the makings of a pistol in there—a
left-handed
pistol—but she couldn't be sure. She picked up a box, like the one Malbert had been tinkering with the other night. It was a hollow metal cube, big enough for a large apple to fit inside, and one end was open. Peculiar.

Ophelia noticed a wooden cabinet against the wall. One door was wedged open a few inches. She replaced the metal cube on the table.

She went to the cabinet and opened the door. The hinges squeaked.

Once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that the cupboard's shelves were bare, except for—

A sob of horror fell out of her mouth.

Except for a glass jar the size of a small butter churn, filled with brownish liquid like a brining jar. Except there weren't any gherkins or dills in this jar. No. In
this
jar, two fair, dainty feet bobbed inside. A lady's feet. In a brining vat.

Ophelia slammed the cupboard door. She couldn't breathe.

Henrietta
. Were those Henrietta's feet? Had she requested a divorce, and Malbert had retaliated with—with what? Murder? Or was Henrietta held captive somewhere, missing her feet?

Ophelia's guts heaved. She hustled out of the workshop as fast as her own blessedly attached feet could carry her.

*   *   *

Gabriel breakfasted early
in Hôtel Meurice's dining room. His night had been a torment of tangled bedclothes and twisting thoughts. He felt like he'd had too much wine but the truth was, he'd had too much Miss Flax.

Telling her of Miss Ivy Banks
had
seemed a brilliant antidote to the distraction that she, Miss Flax, posed. Obviously, Gabriel could not even begin to think of
marrying
Miss Flax (the very idea!) and he refused to become like that repulsive Lord Dutherbrook and take an actress for a mistress. Which, of course, was an utterly laughable idea in itself. Although Miss Flax was bold beyond all comprehension, she would never be any man's mistress. Of that, Gabriel was certain.

However, Miss Flax's antics yesterday had done nothing to ease the tug Gabriel felt towards her. The antidote had, somehow, already worn off.

When the waiter arrived with more coffee, he deposited two envelopes on the tablecloth.

“These were delivered to the front desk,” the waiter said. He poured coffee from a silver pot, and left.

One envelope was stark white, with a tidy, clerical hand that read
Lord Harrington
. The second envelope was damp and slightly crumpled.
Professor Penrose
, it read, and Gabriel recognized Miss Flax's uneven handwriting.

There. You see? She even had flawed penmanship. Better to think of Miss Ivy Banks's hand, which might've been in a schoolroom primer.

Gabriel tore open Miss Flax's envelope with the butter knife.

Strange developments. Must speak with you. Will be waiting in the Place des Vosges at ten o'clock.—O.F.

Place des Vosges was a small park a few blocks from Hôtel Malbert. Miss Flax had doubtless looked it up in that Baedeker she was forever lugging about. He was somewhat alarmed at her message, but surely if it was an emergency she would have said so.

Gabriel sliced open the second envelope.

An excessively grand letterhead, with a scrolled design of waves and dolphins, declared
M. T. S. Cherrien (Avocat) 116 Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

Ah. Perhaps Cherrien had found a spare moment before January, then.

The note was in English.

Lord Harrington,

I expect your presence at my office this morning at nine o'clock, regarding a most pressing matter. Your discretion is necessary.

—M. Cherrien

Oh-ho! He
expected
Gabriel's presence, did he? Gabriel was accustomed to persons, if not scraping before him, at least addressing him as a respected equal. This Cherrien chap deserved to have his insulting summons crumpled and abandoned among the bread crusts.

Yet curiosity trumped pride. Gabriel glanced at his pocket watch. Eight thirty-seven. He downed the last of his coffee and stood.

*   *   *

Ophelia had been
up since the crack of dawn. Once she'd sent off the note to the professor at his hotel, she'd fallen to pacing and fretting in her chamber. The vision of those white feet bobbing in the brining vat was just about enough to make her pack up Prue and their carpetbags and put them on the first train to
anywhere
.

But Ophelia had never been one to run from problems. They usually caught up to you again, anyway. And Henrietta was yet to be found.

Ophelia looked through the window into the sky. Gray clouds bulged. Another rainy day. She glanced down into the garden, and averted her eyes from the vegetable patch.

Motion caught her eye, over by the carriage house.

Good gracious. There was the coachman Henri, standing in the carriage house doorway. He spoke with a lady whose back was turned. A slim lady in a hooded cloak. Eglantine, maybe?

Ophelia watched. Henri's exchange with the lady was brief. His shoulders hunched, and the lady kept glancing over her shoulder. Then Henri went inside and the lady hurried towards the house.

Her hood fell back in her haste.

It wasn't Eglantine. It was Miss Seraphina Smythe.

She disappeared through the carriageway arch.

Ophelia checked the mantelpiece clock. Almost nine o'clock. She went to fetch Prue.

Prue was still abed.

“Prue? Prue, wake up. Don't you want breakfast?” Ophelia wiggled Prue's shoulder.

The fat ginger cat on the pillow yawned and stretched a foreleg. Prue muttered something, rolled over, and went back to sawing gourds.

Petered out from all that house drudgery. Ophelia would leave her to sleep. She went downstairs to the breakfast room.

Ophelia's stomach lurched at the sight of Malbert's bald head gleaming above a newspaper at the head of the table. Eglantine and Austorga slumped across from each other, eating in silence. They both wore irritable expressions, and each had a peculiar oily sheen to her face.

Where was Miss Smythe?

“Good morning, everyone!” Ophelia said, forcing a cheery, matronly tone. She plopped down next to Eglantine.

Malbert peeped over his newspaper but said nothing.

Those pickled feet
. Ugh.

“Good morning, Madame Brand,” Austorga said. She took a bite of pastry—holding it, Ophelia noted, with her right hand. Not her left. A few pastry flakes clung to her oily cheeks.

“Mm,” Eglantine sighed, stirring her coffee. She held her spoon with her right hand. Not her left.

Beatrice plodded in. She brought the coffeepot from the sideboard and poured Ophelia a cup. Greasy hairs hung loose from her bun, and she smelled faintly of soured wine. She flung a pastry on a plate in front of Ophelia, and left.

The family crunched and sipped in silence. Malbert turned a page of his newspaper. With his right hand, not his left.

“Did you enjoy the ballet yesterday evening?” Ophelia asked.

Malbert's newspaper froze. Eglantine sputtered on her coffee.

Austorga said, “Oh! Most exciting. There was a murder! It was the same murderer as the girl in the garden, too, and the police have caught him.”

“Indeed?” Ophelia carefully placed her coffee cup in its saucer. Still, it rattled. “The madman of the streets?”

“Yes. He was seen by several people fleeing from the opera house—with blood on his hands, and raving about someone paying him to kill! Quite mad.”

Ophelia frowned. Perhaps she'd been wrong in thinking the madman was innocent. Perhaps he
was
a killer . . . for hire.

“Someone caught him and held him until the gendarmes arrived,” Austorga said. “Who was it that caught him, sister dear?”

“The apprentice lad from Monsieur Colifichet's shop,” Eglantine said. “
Must
we speak of this?”

“Pierre,” Malbert said.

They all stared at him; it was the first word he'd said.