Cinderella Six Feet Under (5 page)

“Wishful thinking.”

“Mm. Perhaps a trick of the light.”

“Precisely.”

“I must admit,
I
felt a pang when we parted.”

“Did you?”

“Well, I thought I did. But perhaps it was only a touch of dyspepsia.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You're meddling in my affairs. Again.”

“And
you're
spitting fire, Miss Flax. I'd have expected to find you in a more”—Gabriel scratched his temple—“well, in a state of mourning, I suppose.”

“Mourning! Why, the cheek! To think I'd be mourning
you
? Like some schoolgirl who'd lost her—her pet kitten?”

“I fail to grasp your meaning.”

Miss Flax deflated. “Not . . . you didn't mean mourning . . .
you
?”

“Not at all. Though I must admit the notion is intriguing.”

She shook raindrops off her umbrella with unwarranted vigor. “Oh, you believe Prue's bit it. Read it in the papers, came scurrying down from your ivory tower to see what all the fuss was about?”

“Miss Bright has not perished?”

“She's perishing from boredom in her mother's moldy old mansion, but other than that, alive and kicking.”

“I seem to have quite missed the boat on this one.”

“Sounds more like you missed the entire fleet.”

*   *   *

They stood on
the stair landing. Miss Flax told Gabriel how she and Prue had come to Paris looking for Henrietta and had stumbled upon the corpse of, evidently, Prue's long-lost sister. How Henrietta was missing, and how no one in the marquis's household seemed to mind. Miss Flax railed against the laziness of the Marais
commissaire
's office and fretted over the weird coincidence of a daughter dead in her own estranged mother's garden. She wondered aloud why the carriageway gate's lock had been changed and described the dead girl's mangled foot.

“So you see,” Miss Flax said, “something's fishy. And I'm here because Prue's sister wasn't a fallen woman. I suspect that she was a ballerina, and I mean to confirm it.”

“Mightn't she have been
both
a ballerina and”—Gabriel cleared his throat—“a fallen woman?”

“You needn't look so grimacey, Professor. I'm an actress.”

He studied her crepey face. “How could I forget?”

“Certainly I know that ballerinas—and lots of actresses, too—supplement their incomes with”—she glanced away—“the attentions of admirers. But the police made Prue's sister out to be some kind of common strumpet. They simply left it at that.”

“So you came to the opera house in an attempt to learn her true identity.”

“The police didn't even care about her name. Like she was just a—a
nothing
. Something chucked onto the rubbish heap. It's not right. Maybe they're even searching for the wrong murderer.”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Just as high-handed as ever, aren't you?” Miss Flax started up the stairs.

Gabriel scratched his head. In the past month or so, he had indulged in picturing what it might be like to meet Miss Flax again. But he had never pictured her so annoyed at him. Women were confounding. He gained her side. “I shall assist you. That is why I am here.”

“You expect me to swallow that horse pill?” At the top of the stairs, Miss Flax looked left, then right. The piano music and rhythmic yelling was coming from somewhere to the left. She went left.

Gabriel went, too.

“You reckon I'll believe that you journeyed all the way from England only to assist me?” she asked. “And for no other reason?”

“I believed Miss Bright was murdered. I was concerned for your safety.”

“And you followed me here from Hôtel Malbert.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me why you're
truly
here.”

“The sightseeing here tends towards the vulgar.”

“Not that.”

“Everyone knows French cuisine is far too heavy on the butter.”

She scowled.

“Although I must confess to a weakness for Bordeaux.”

She stopped walking. “You, Professor, are as transparent as a windowpane. You've got a hidden motive.”

“What have I done to be worthy of such prodigious distrust?”

“You didn't know it was really me when you followed me here!”

“The steward turned me away.”

“Sounds like him. Baldewyn, he's called. Prue calls him Mister Lizard.”

“I decided to follow the first member of the household who emerged and strike up a conversation. In order, you see, to discover
your
whereabouts, Miss Flax.”

A half-truth. At this juncture, with Miss Flax careening so dangerously close to his secret, it must suffice.

Miss Flax fumed away down the corridor.

Gabriel touched the left side of his chest, felt the rectangle of the Charles Perrault volume nestled beneath layers of greatcoat, jacket, waistcoat, shirt. He shoved his hands in his greatcoat pockets and sauntered after Miss Flax.

P
rue wiped her sweaty brow on her arm.

What had she signed on to, anyway?

The inside of the china cupboard, which Beatrice had commanded her to clean, turned her stomach: sticky cobwebs, mildew-blotted cookery books, chunks of something-or-other that was maybe bread but possibly cheese, judging by the reek of it. And an avalanche of mouse plops, both antique and fresh.

Beatrice had tied on her bonnet and cloak and taken a basket off to market, leaving Prue alone. Well, if the company of two tubby, dozing cats and mice playing peekaboo counted as
alone
.

Prue stacked the cookery books on the flagstones, swept rodent plops into a copper dustpan, and dumped the moldy whatsits in the rubbish bin outside the kitchen door.

Outside, she could just see the edge of that rotted vegetable patch. She still felt the coldness of her sister's body and she had to keep swiping the picture of her staring eyes away. Where was her sister now? Still laid out at some morgue? All of a sudden, Prue longed to attend her sister's funeral. To sew things up, maybe. But no one had said anything about a funeral.

On the sunny side, Prue was finally learning to be a housewife. For Hansel.

Prue's eyes fell on the topmost cookery book on the stack she'd made. The words, stamped in flaking-off gold on the loose cover, weren't in any language
she
knew.

She set aside her broom and dustpan and hefted the book. It was awfully thick, and it looked so, well,
serious
, as though the cookery or housewifing knowledge it held wasn't womanly twaddle, but honest-to-goodness Important Work.

Prue cracked it open. Dust puffed up, and she sneezed.

Page after page of thick, hand-lettered black script, in more of that mystery language. But there were plenty of pictures. Little, intricate, inky-black pictures of soup pots and turtles, bedsteads, stones, bees, carrots, flowers, boxes, pies, and brooms. Fascinating. Befuddling.

But it seemed that if one were to study the pictures with mighty care, all the magic of housewifery might be squeezed from this single, magnificent volume.

The china cupboard was forgotten. Prue, for the first time in her life, set to studying.

*   *   *

The opera house
corridor was a buzzing hive of rehearsal and practice rooms. A trombone honked out scales, a violin spiraled through arpeggios, a soprano warbled and, mingled through it all, more of that man yelling: “
Un, deux, trois! Un, deux, trois
!
” Then, “
Mon Dieu, Marie! T'es un
éléphant! Encore!
”

All as familiar to Ophelia as the back of her own hand. Of course, the violinists in Howard DeLuxe's Varieties sounded much more screechy.

“Why are you still following me, Professor?” Ophelia asked. Encountering Professor Penrose, after months of scrubbing him out of her mind, made her heart flutter like a hatchling chick. And
that
was simply irksome. She felt angry at him, too, and embarrassed in his presence, and she was unsure how to behave. She figured she was missing a piece of her mind, a piece that other people had. The piece that allowed a person to do things like fall in love or believe in fairy tales.

Penrose drew something from his pocket and unfolded it. The morgue drawing of the dead girl that had appeared in all the newspapers. “You did not think to bring one of these along, did you?”

Drat.

“And I speak French,” Penrose said. “I might be your translator.”

“What's in it for you?”

“Nothing.”

“You're a terrible actor. I know you've got better things to do.”

“I may have
other
things to do, but they are not necessarily better.”

Well. A translator
would
make snooping easier.

“Fine,” Ophelia said. “But I'm in charge.”

He smiled.

Ophelia peeked through an open door. A rehearsal room: high ceiling, tall windows, wooden floors, mirrors. Rows of lady dancers clung to wooden barres
,
kicking their legs like wind-up tin soldiers. They wore tulle skirts over tight linen chemises, white woolen stockings, and ballet slippers. In the corner, a gentleman in a waistcoat banged away at a piano, a cigar dangling between a moustache and beard. All the yelling was coming from a gentleman in a black suit. He was long and snake-narrow, with a pointy black beard. He paced between the rows of dancers, poking and prodding them.

“Who is that man?” Penrose asked Ophelia.

“A dancing master, I think. Dancing masters oversee the daily classes for the company, and the rehearsals and such.” The dancing master in Howard DeLuxe's Varieties had
also
been a juggler of flaming sticks and a teller of bawdy jokes. Never mind that.

“Would he know every dancer in the company?”

“Yes.”

Ophelia and Penrose waited for several minutes. The class ended. Sweaty dancers streamed through the doors, pulling knitted wraps around their shoulders and chattering.

Ophelia and Penrose went in.

The man with the pointy beard hovered beside the piano, going over something with the pianist.

“Would you show him the picture?” Ophelia whispered to Penrose. “Ask him straight out if she was a dancer here?”

Pointy Beard and the pianist glanced up in surprise as Ophelia and Penrose drew close.

“Oui?”
Pointy Beard said, looking down his nose.

Penrose said something in French.

“Ah, you are an Englishman,” Pointy Beard said.
He
had an American accent—Philadelphian, Ophelia would bet.

Peculiar.

“I do apologize for the intrusion,” Penrose said, “Mister—?”

“Grant. Caleb Grant. And you are—”

“Lord Harrington.”

“Ah.” Grant dismissed the pianist with a shooing motion.

“I, and my”—Penrose glanced at Ophelia—“aunt, wish to confirm the identity of a young girl who was, most regrettably, found dead three days ago in Le Marais.” He showed Grant the picture.

Grant barely glanced at it. “Sybille Pinet.”

Ophelia's heart leapt. “She was a dancer in this company?”

“In the
corps de ballet
. Beautiful, graceful, if not particularly virtuosic or—”

“I knew it! Her feet, see—well, the police have not—the police don't know who she is. Why didn't you—”

“The police never asked, madam. If they had, I would most certainly have answered their questions.”

“But,” Ophelia said, “surely a
murder
—”

“
L'Opéra de Paris
, as you are doubtless aware, is an institution that must maintain a certain degree of, shall we say, discretion. The newspapermen would feast like carrion eaters if Sybille's death were linked to us. We cannot pack the seats with the dregs of a public that wishes to associate itself with sordid crimes when we count, particularly due to the current International Exhibition, great scientists, diplomats, important novelists, duchesses, even a prince of Persia, among our audience.”

What a windbag.

“I beg your pardon,” Penrose said, “but do you have any idea who killed the girl?”

Grant turned away and rifled through the stack of sheet music on the piano. “No.”

“Have you ever happened to meet the Marquise de la Roque-Fabliau?” Ophelia asked, just in case.

“I cannot say that I have.”

“She was—is—American, too. And she used to be on the stage.”

Grant's nostrils pinched.

“Where did Sybille Pinet live?” Ophelia asked.

“I've no idea. Now”—Grant looked at his pocket watch—“I really must . . .”

“Of course,” Penrose said.

“But—” Ophelia said.

Penrose drew her away. “Thank you, Mr. Grant,” he said over his shoulder.

“What a slinky dog!” Ophelia whispered, once she and Penrose were in the corridor. “Not breathing a word to the police?”

“He was immediately forthcoming to us about the girl's name.”

“Well, certainly. Because anyone else in this building could tell us the very same thing.”

“True. Should we attempt to learn where Miss Pinet lived? I believe I noticed some sort of clerical office downstairs.”

*   *   *

A cluttered room
with wooden cabinets and shelves led off the downstairs corridor. Its frosted glass door was ajar. Inside, a sparrow-shouldered woman with faded blond hair and sagging, powdered cheeks sat at a desk. She wore a plain gown and, surprisingly, carmine paint on her lips.

Theater folk
, Gabriel believed the term was. He glanced at Miss Flax in her preposterous disguise.

“Go ahead,” Miss Flax said to him softly. “Ask her about Sybille.”

“Excuse me,
madame
,” Gabriel said to the clerical lady in French. “Did you by chance know Sybille Pinet, a young dancer in this company?”

“I keep the books. I know everyone. And I know, too”—the lady's eyes suddenly filled with tears—“of Sybille's death. Are you her uncle?”

“No. We are both her friends.” Gabriel paused. “I beg your pardon, but why did you not suppose I am Mademoiselle Pinet's father?”

“You are too young, for one thing. And she said her father died five years ago.”

“She knew Sybille,” Miss Flax said in an excited whisper.

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “And Miss Pinet's father died five years ago—or so she said.”

“Ask her why the police haven't figured out who Sybille was, why nobody said anything to the police.”

Gabriel translated.

“Sybille was a quiet girl,” the lady said.

“But surely everyone knew her, still, and her picture was in half the newspapers in Europe, and surely every newspaper in Paris,” Gabriel said.

The lady hesitated. “We, well, we decided to keep the connection between her death and the opera ballet . . . concealed.”

“What's she saying?” Miss Flax whispered, impatient now.

“Who decided to conceal it?” Gabriel asked the clerical lady in French.

Miss Flax's umbrella poked Gabriel in the ribs. He winced.

The clerical lady glanced out into the corridor. She lowered her voice. “Monsieur Grant. The dancing master. He made an announcement to the company, and all the musicians and stage hands, too, that we should avoid speaking with the police.”

“Whatever for?” Gabriel discreetly pushed Miss Flax's umbrella away.

“He said that the murderer had already been identified, that justice would prevail, and that, therefore, there was no need to drag our company's name through the mire through association with a—a sordid crime. Because Sybille—oh!—I believed her to be a
good girl
, but why, then, was she in that costly gown that she had no business wearing, out in the night, alone? Shot?”

“
Tell me what you're talking about
,” Miss Flax whispered. “This is
my
investigation, Professor.”

“I haven't forgotten, Miss Flax, and neither have my ribs.” Gabriel told her what the lady had said.

“Everyone in the company agreed to silence?” Ophelia said. “That's peculiar.”

Gabriel said as much in French to the clerical lady.

“Yes, well, Monsieur Grant's word carries much weight. He is not the impresario, but he
is
the head choreographer as well as the dancing master. He is much feared. He alone casts the roles and hires and dismisses dancers.”

Gabriel passed this on to Miss Flax, who nodded. “Does she have any notion why Sybille might have been in Le Marais that evening?”

Gabriel translated.

“Oh dear me, no,” the lady said. “Although . . . well, we do try to protect the girls, but . . . now and again, one slips through the cracks.” Her eyes were distant. “I wonder . . .”

“She was extraordinarily beautiful,” Gabriel said. “That is sometimes dangerous.”

“She was briefly employed as an artist's model, I was told, a year or so ago, which
will
mix a girl up with the wrong sort. And she had no protector. No family. She was a bit mysterious, yet with something quite prim and proper about her. She had grown up in an orphanage of some kind, where she had taken dancing lessons, and she had demonstrated ability. She danced for Monsieur Grant in one of our annual auditions. That was, let me think . . . nearly two years ago.”

Gabriel translated for Miss Flax.

“Ask her where Sybille lived,” Miss Flax said.

Gabriel asked.

“In a boardinghouse in the Quartier Pigalle—”

“Pigalle!” Gabriel said. “Good heavens.”

“Yes, well, that is where many of our girls live. It is fairly close by, and inexpensive.” The lady rose, and found a card in one of the filing cabinets. “Sixteen Rue Frochot.”

*   *   *

Outside, the rain
had let up. Sunlight bounced off the wet square in front of the opera house. Carriages, delivery wagons, and omnibuses slopped by in the street.