Cinderella Six Feet Under (24 page)

Ophelia held her breath. She straightened and turned.

Malbert stood in the doorway. His bald pate shone. So did the large, squared-off meat cleaver he held in one hand. In his other hand he held Ophelia's battered theatrical case by its handle. “Baldewyn told me that you were back. He is a good servant, Baldewyn.”

“Monsieur Malbert!” Ophelia said, overdoing the imperious matron's voice just a touch. “I have misplaced an important missive that I—”

“You may cease the ruse, whoever you are.” Malbert's eyelids fluttered like a fly's wings.

“Who
ever
I am? Why, what do you—”

Malbert adjusted his grip on the meat cleaver. He took a step forward.

Ophelia tried to swallow. Her throat stuck.

“At first, I did not believe it when Lulu told me of your theatrical case.”

Lulu
. She'd
known
it was Lulu.

“But then,
oui
, I began to see how peculiar you really do seem,
madame.
Or are you a
mademoiselle
? You came to my home under false pretenses. Disguised. Lying at every turn. What do you want?”

“I want to find Prue. To protect her.”

“Surely that did not require continuing with your ridiculous disguise.” He came still closer.

The meat cleaver didn't look especially sharp—thank the heavens for Beatrice's incompetent housekeeping. But it looked heavy.

Ophelia pressed herself back against the desk. “Why did you kill Henrietta? Was it on account of your bigamy?”

That
stopped Malbert. His moist lips parted.

“That's right. I know you're still married to Clara Babin. Did Henrietta find out? Is that why you got rid of her?”

“I would never have harmed my darling, precious Henrietta.”

“Do you mean to hack off my feet?” Ophelia's voice shook. “Just like you did to Henrietta? Hack them off and pop them in a pickling vat?”

Malbert's eyes fell to Ophelia's large, worn boots, just visible below the hem of her bombazine gown. “Hacking off
your
feet would indeed be an undertaking.”

Ophelia flicked her eyes around the room. Malbert stood in the path to the door—the only door—but there were the tall windows overlooking the street. She could make a side step and take her chances with the windows.

Only—she glanced back to Malbert—only he had her theatrical case. Her trusty theatrical case that she'd carted around with her from circus to variety hall and all the way over here to Europe. True, the greasepaints, wigs, and false muttonchops in there had gotten her into a fair amount of trouble. But they'd also gotten her
out
of trouble.

Malbert edged closer.

It was now or never.

Ophelia folded the prince's envelope in half and stuffed it into her bodice, sideways between two buttons. She lunged towards Malbert.

He swung the meat cleaver high.

She snatched the theatrical case from his weak grip and darted to the side. She fancied she felt the breeze of the whizzing meat cleaver behind her. She ran to the windows and swept aside the draperies. There. The latch. She fumbled with it but her fingers were for some reason like clumsy sausages.

“I will not allow you to go!” Malbert said behind her. Thumping footsteps coming closer, and she'd bet the farm that he was still brandishing that cleaver.

Ophelia hefted the theatrical case and bashed the window. Glass shards showered down. She climbed onto the low sill, hugged her theatrical case to her chest, and jumped. Her skirts poofed like a parachute. She landed on two feet on the sidewalk, hip pads bouncing.

Penrose was halfway out of the carriage. Shock slackened his face as he watched her galloping towards him, but he said nothing. He bundled her and then himself into the carriage and slammed the door. They jostled forward.

Ophelia couldn't breathe or speak. Her heart raced. She looked out the carriage window just in time to glimpse Malbert staring out the shattered window. She pulled the folded envelope from her bodice and waved it. “I've got Prince Rupprecht's address,” she said, panting.

B
y the time they reached Prince Rupprecht's house, Ophelia had straightened her wig and, since she had her theatrical case right there on her lap, she had done some repairs to her face. Professor Penrose had watched the proceedings with interest and, Ophelia fancied, slight alarm.

Prince Rupprecht resided in a stately, white stone mansion behind spiked iron gates. The drapes were all drawn.

“You need not come in, Miss Flax,” Penrose said. “Perhaps you should rest after your ordeal with the—”

Ophelia was already halfway out the carriage door.

“At least allow me to ask the questions of Prince Rupprecht,” Penrose said. “He strikes me as the sort who only feels regard for gentlemen's conversation.”

“You're right about that.”

The front gates were ajar, and a dignified manservant answered their knock on the door.

Penrose said something about the prince in French and passed his card. He
had
to be running low on those cards by now. He passed them out like show bills.

The servant led them into a foyer and disappeared.

“Looks like we've come just in the nick of time,” Ophelia whispered. She pointed to the pile of traveling trunks at the base of a lavish marble staircase. “He must be setting off for his château.”

“I am, I am!” a voice boomed above them. Prince Rupprecht trotted down the stairs. “Lord Harrington! What a charming surprise.” He reached the foot of the stairs, and surveyed Ophelia in her matronly disguise. “Good afternoon,
madame
,” he said in a bored voice.

Penrose once again introduced Ophelia as his aunt. “I would very much like to have a word with you, Prince Rupprecht, if you have the time.”

“I am just about to set off for Château de Roche, but certainly, certainly. Come this way.”

Prince Rupprecht led Ophelia and the professor down a wide corridor filled with chandeliers and statues of voluptuous ladies, and through tasseled curtains into a sitting room. He went straight to a sideboard and poured out two brandies. He passed one to Penrose—completely ignoring Ophelia—and fell into a thronelike chair.

Ophelia and Penrose sat.

Penrose laid aside the brandy and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I shan't waste your time. I was told you commissioned the ballet
Cendrillon
at the opera house. Why?”

“Why?” Prince Rupprecht swirled his brandy. “I am a newcomer to this city, Lord Harrington. My land, Slavonia, is thought to be backward by the Parisians. Provincial. Some even say barbaric. I wish to make France my home, however, and so, to earn the respect of the people here, I commissioned the ballet. At great expense, true, but it proves, I think, that Prince Rupprecht of Slavonia belongs here, at the center of the civilized world. Not in a backwater.”

And Ophelia thought
she
was touchy about being a bumpkin.

“Why do you ask, Lord Harrington?”

“I was considering commissioning a ballet myself, as it happens.”

What a tall tale! But Prince Rupprecht seemed to buy it; he nodded.

“Another fairy tale ballet, I fancy,” Penrose said.

Prince Rupprecht grunted what sounded like approval and finished off his brandy. He placed the glass on the carpet and lounged back in his chair.

“‘The Sleeping Beauty,' perhaps,” Penrose said. “I enjoyed that tale as a lad. But I must get the sets and the costumes just so, and I was told that you, Prince Rupprecht, took great care over the costumes and scenery of
Cendrillon
.”

“Who told you that?”

“I cannot recall.”

“I paid some attention, yes. If a man sinks that much money into something, he must see it through, yes?”

“The detail of that ballet! Colifichet's scenery is simply stupendous, and the costumes.” Penrose paused. “How is it that the ballerina's costume has a stomacher that resembles to a startling degree an heirloom stomacher belonging to the Malbert family?”

“Does it?” Prince Rupprecht had drawn a small object—a coin—from his pocket, and he tossed it into the air and caught it, over and over. “I did not design the costumes, Lord Harrington.” He chuckled, his eyes strained. “I wished for the costume to be particularly beautiful, of course, so I commissioned Madame Fayette—have you heard of her?—to design and make it. No cheap theatrical rags, yes?”

That explained why the ballet costume was so unnecessarily fine, then.

Up went the coin, and Prince Rupprecht caught it. And again, and again.

Ophelia glanced at Penrose. He made a slight shake of his head:
no
. She ignored it.

“Prince Rupprecht, whatever are you throwing that coin about for?” Ophelia asked.

He caught the coin and tucked it in his pocket. “My nursemaid told me, when I was a boy, that you must keep a coin in your pocket to appease the ghosts you meet.”

“Ghosts! Have you ghosts in your house?” Ophelia asked.

“One never knows.” Prince Rupprecht snatched his empty glass from the floor and lumbered—unsteadily now—back to the drinks table.

“I ask about the stomacher,” Penrose said, “because in my academic work I happened to have come across an old version of the tale that assigns the stomacher to Cinderella's ball gown. Not the younger stepsister's.”

Prince Rupprecht brought his sloshing-full brandy glass back to his throne and thumped to a seat. “That is but a silly bit of lore, is it not? I heard it from the mouths of the mademoiselles Malbert. They claim kinship with Cinderella and claim their house was the setting of the tale. Rubbish.”

“Rather,” Penrose said.

Ophelia frowned. Prince Rupprecht had been so attentive to the stepsisters at the exhibition, but now he seemed contemptuous of them. As she thought this over, her gaze floated around the chamber. Another chamber opened out behind the prince, beyond a pair of satin curtains held open with golden cords. She saw a statue of a fryer-hipped Venus, an enormous Turkish divan bursting with pillows, and an oil painting of frolicking nymphs—in their birthday suits—over the fireplace.

Prince Rupprecht caught her staring. He stood and, rambling to the professor about ballet costumes and scenery designs, went to the curtains and shut them.

“Well, we won't keep you any longer, Prince Rupprecht.” Penrose stood, and Ophelia did, too. But she kept trying to see through the crack the prince had left in those curtains. “I do hope your ball is a success.”

“You must come, Lord Harrington. There will be far too many ladies, and I cannot dance with them all.”

“Perhaps I shall. I have heard rumors of an important announcement. You won't tell me who the fortunate lady is, will you?”

Prince Rupprecht smiled, and tapped the side of his red nose. “It is to be a grand surprise.”

*   *   *

“He was hiding
something in that alcove,” Ophelia whispered as she and Penrose swung through the prince's front gate. “I'm sure of it.”

“He merely wished to hide all of those”—Penrose cleared his throat—“all of his artworks, Miss Flax. He wished to protect your ladylike sensibilities.”

“No. I can't believe it.” Prince Rupprecht, of all the gentlemen Ophelia had ever met, was one of the least likely to give a fig about a lady's feelings.

“What is next?” Penrose asked. They paused beside their carriage, waiting at the curb.

Ophelia pressed her lips together. Amid all that hullabaloo with Malbert and the meat cleaver, she hadn't exactly planned things out.

“You cannot return to Hôtel Malbert,” Penrose said.

“Not if I want to keep my feet on.”

“Stay at my hotel.”

All the air gusted out of Ophelia's lungs. “Oh. I—”

“In your own suite, of course.” Penrose glanced past her, looking flustered. “I am thoroughly aware that you have your pride, Miss Flax, and are perhaps about to condemn my offer of assistance as a
handout
, but at this juncture you really haven't anywhere else to go.”

“I've got money.” Ophelia jutted out her chin. The plain truth was . . . if she spent even five more francs, she could bid her steamship passage to America good-bye.
Then
what would she do? Become a cancan dancer?

“You worked a great deal for that money, as a
maid
, for pity's sake,” Penrose said. “I shan't allow you to spend it all. You need it.”

This was too, too humiliating. When Ophelia was traipsing around with the professor, spying and quizzing people, well, she felt they were just about equal. But once money got into the mix, it poisoned things. He was an earl. She was an unemployed actress who was probably wanted by the Paris police by now.

“Miss Flax. Please. We'll go to my hotel and have luncheon—surely you are famished by—”

“
Mercy
,” Ophelia hissed. “Professor! Look!” She pointed over Penrose's shoulder. He swung around.

The masked velocipede rider pedaled behind a delivery wagon. The rider turned his—or her—head. The eyeholes in the highwayman's mask were shadowed by the brim of the bowler hat. The rider reached inside the flapping jacket, pulled out a revolver, aimed at Ophelia—

Penrose pushed Ophelia behind their carriage just as a shot cracked out.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, pressed against her.

“Think so.”

Penrose pulled something from inside his jacket. A revolver.

Their driver yelled at Penrose in French. Penrose signaled the driver to crouch down. He cocked his revolver. Slowly, he peered around the carriage, revolver poised. He watched for several seconds, breathing hard.

He turned to Ophelia. “He's gone. Let us go, before Prince Rupprecht emerges and asks questions.” He said something to the driver, and the driver shook his head and waved his hands.

“He refuses to follow the cyclist,” Penrose told Ophelia.

“We could follow on foot.”

“He's had too much of a start. Besides which, I won't expose you like that, Miss Flax. That cyclist is mad.”

*   *   *

“That settles it,”
Ophelia said, once the carriage was moving. “Someone's trying to pop me off. That's the third time! First at the exhibition hall, then two times with that creepy velocipede rider.”

Penrose nodded, his mouth grim.

“The only people possessing the slight build of the cyclist who were at the exhibition hall were Miss Smythe and Miss Eglantine,” Ophelia said.

“Are you really able to picture either of those young ladies on the loose in the city, dressed as a gentleman, shooting a pistol?”

“If she were desperate enough, sure.”

“Why would someone choose to follow us, shoot at us, from a velocipede rather than a closed carriage? They risk being identified, and it is wildly inefficient.”

“Not everyone is able to afford a carriage.”

“You suggest that the cyclist is short of funds?”

“Perhaps. Young ladies like Miss Smythe and Miss Eglantine, while their wants are taken care of by their parents, do not always have money of their own to spend.”

“I hadn't thought of that.”

“Or it might be someone who is really and truly penniless.”

“That does not match the description of, say, Madame Fayette, or Monsieur Malbert, or Monsieur Colifichet—all persons who I wouldn't blink an eye if you told me they wanted to harm us, but all who have sufficient funds to hire not only an assassin, but a carriage for their assassin.”

They made a detour to the Le Marais
commissaire
's office. This time, Ophelia stayed behind in the carriage with the turtle. After her confrontation with Malbert, Inspector Foucher was the last person she wished to see, but the professor hoped to take a stab at speaking with the madman who'd been arrested last night.

Penrose slammed himself back into the carriage in fewer than five minutes.

“Did Inspector Foucher tell you to hit the trail?” Ophelia asked.

“After a fashion, yes.”

*   *   *

Hôtel Meurice, Professor
Penrose's hotel, stood across from the Tuileries Gardens. Penrose booked Ophelia into a suite of rooms while she dawdled at his elbow, feeling mortified but at least reassured that, in her Mrs. Brand disguise, no one would take her for a disreputable lady. She held her reticule sideways in both hands because the turtle was inside, on top of the Baedeker.

They planned to meet at nine o'clock in the evening to go to Colifichet's shop. Penrose left her at her door.

The suite's windows overlooked a busy thoroughfare. Across the street sprawled the Tuileries Gardens: bare rattling branches, puddly walks, statues of wild beasts, and a large fountain in the distance.

The suite was staggeringly grand and Ophelia was afraid to sit down lest her mud-stained skirts soil the rich brocade. The four-poster bed was huge and downy-looking. Delicious heat, all for her, radiated from a coal fire. The lavatory taps would pump endless hot water, and a brand-new bar of lemon blossom soap, still wrapped, sat in a crystal dish.