Cinderella Six Feet Under (6 page)

“We ought to go to Sybille's boardinghouse,” Ophelia said. “Surely someone there will know something about the night she died.”

“Should you perhaps return to Hôtel Malbert? Won't you be missed?”

Ophelia rummaged around in her reticule. “You aren't going to do
that
old routine, are you? Nudging me in the direction of propriety?” She pulled out her Baedeker.

“Would it make a difference if I did?”

“No.” Ophelia checked the index and flipped to a map captioned
Place Pigalle & Environs
. She scoured the map for Rue Frochot. “There. Ought to be an easy walk.”

“It's well over a mile, surely.”

Ophelia bookmarked the map with a red ribbon. “I used to walk three miles to the schoolhouse every morning as a girl.”

“We'll hire a cabriolet.”

“I
won't
have you paying for things.” Ophelia turned in what she hoped was the direction of Place Pigalle.

She stopped. Once again, the fanciful placard decorated with mice, rats, and lizards caught her eye. She pointed it out to Penrose. “What does that placard say?”

“Good heavens.
Cendrillon
.”

“Sendry-what?”

He paused. “Cinderella.”

Ophelia's jaw dropped. She swung on Penrose. “Cinderella?
Cinderella?
Why, you low-down, deceitful, double-crossing, two-faced scallywag! I knew it. I
knew
it!”

“I fail to grasp your meaning.”

“Fail to—humbug! I knew you were fibbing about why you're here in Paris. And now”—she jabbed her umbrella at the placard—“I've got proof.”

“That I've traveled hundreds of miles to take in a ballet?”

“That you're here on account of your everlasting, crumbly—and, might I add, downright
nutty
fairy tale obsession.” Ophelia thought of Sybille in that dress, missing a shoe. In a pumpkin patch. “To think I swallowed that line about you coming here to help me. You're only in Paris on account of this ballet, and the way Sybille died.” She barged off across the square. Pigeons scattered.

Ophelia hadn't believed for a second that the professor was in Paris because of her. But she'd
wished
to believe it. Ugh.

Penrose caught up and stopped her with a firm grip around her upper arm.

She
wouldn't
look at him.

“Miss Flax,” Penrose said in a rough, low voice. “Please. Look at me.”

Ophelia breathed in and out three times. She lifted her gaze. The professor's eyes, a clear, bright hazel behind his spectacles, looked like . . . they looked like
home
.

Madness.
Home
was four walls and a roof.
Home
couldn't be a man. And what was wrong with her to think for even a second that home
could
be a man?

She wriggled her arm from his grasp. “What was it you wished to say?”

“You have made rather a large leap of logic, assuming that this ballet has anything to do with the murder.”

“But don't you see? Sybille's death
must
have had something to do with the ballet.”

“Because she was a dancer within the institution in which a Cinderella ballet is being performed? That hardly seems—”

“Don't you know? Sybille, when we found her in the garden . . . she wore a fancy ball gown. Like Cinderella in the story. And there were squashes there, too—
pumpkins
, don't you see? I hadn't realized it until now, but . . . And her foot—well, she was missing her shoe.”

“Good God.”

“Quit pretending you didn't know. Like I said, your acting isn't exactly top rail.” Why did everything she said come out so ornery? Ophelia found herself fidgeting with the umbrella handle.

“How could I have known? I saw but one report in the newspaper. It made no mention of what the girl wore. My interest in the murder stemmed solely from a concern for your safety. Pray, listen. Allow me to assist you, Miss Flax. I shall stay in Paris as long as it takes to locate the marquise.”

“What of the university? Your students?”

“They'll barely notice I am gone. If the police are not searching for Henrietta, as you said, then finding her might be quite a simple task. We will check all the hotels in the city, check the steamship passenger lists for all of this week's sailings to New York—and elsewhere. She sounds like the sort who'd sail off to Bolivia.”

“If she met the King of Bolivia, then yes. Why do you wish to help me?”

Penrose paused. He adjusted his spectacles and gazed past her into the street. “To be honest, I am not quite certain.”

“Well, at least you're finally being aboveboard with me.”

G
abriel could not convince Miss Flax to allow him to hire a carriage, so they walked all the way to Place Pigalle. Miss Flax kept her eyes on her Baedeker and the sights and left Gabriel alone with his guilt.

Why hadn't he told her the truth about the book and the house? She would have laughed, but that was surely no reason to lie. Gabriel was well accustomed to his research being scoffed at. And dash it all, what had possessed him to say he'd stay in Paris until Henrietta was found? It had been false, saying that he wouldn't be missed in Oxford. The dean would have his neck.

In the mile and a half between Salle le Peletier and the Quartier Pigalle, the buildings grew shabbier, the sidewalks thicker with pedestrians and alley cats and rubbish, and the street chatter grew more coarse. Quartier Pigalle, at the foot of Montmartre hill, brimmed with literary cafes and, up in the garrets, painters' studios. A disreputable class of women infested the quarter, although at this time of day such creatures were still sleeping off last night's wine.

Gabriel longed to whisk Miss Flax in and out of this neighborhood, posthaste. Despite her colorful past, Miss Flax somehow retained an air of innocence.

“Here it is.” She stopped at two large doors on Rue Frochot, painted a dingy yellow with the number
16
hanging on nails. She tried the rusty ring that served as a door handle. The door swung inward.

The boardinghouse's courtyard was tight, weedy, and reeking of sour waters. Rainwater mottled the plaster walls. A rawboned woman bent with a bucket over a rain barrel at the bottom of a gutter pipe.

“
Bonjour, madame
,” Gabriel said.

The woman straightened. She inspected Gabriel's gentlemanlike attire with approval, but she did not seem to be as impressed by Miss Flax's matronly appearance.
“Oui?”

“Are you the landlady of this establishment?” Gabriel asked in French.

She nodded, wiping raw knuckles on her apron.

“She is the landlady,” Gabriel said softly to Miss Flax.

“Good. Tell her we are here for Sybille's belongings—oh, and find out how long Sybille lived here.”

“I am the uncle of Sybille Pinet,” Gabriel said to the landlady. “I am here to collect her things.”

“High time you did! I have already let her room, but she left me a box of trash. I was meaning to haul it to the rag and bone shop later today.”

“I did not know my niece well,” Gabriel said. “I had quite lost sight of her when I received a telegram from her place of employment at the opera house, informing me that she had been murdered.”

“Yes, murdered.” The landlady almost smiled.

“For how long did she let a room here?”

“Near two years—no, a year and a half. Would have been two years in the spring.”

“Almost two years,” Gabriel murmured to Miss Flax.

The landlady led them across the courtyard, through a low doorway, and into a murky room that was half office and half refuse heap.

“I remember Sybille as a meek young girl,” Gabriel said.

“They always turn out that way from those convent orphanages. She grew up in one of those since the age of four, she told me. Mild as a little lamb she was, and always paid her rent on time and kept her room clean. Scarcely made friends with the other girls. Never a peep out of that one. No trouble at all. Well, until lately.”

“Oh?” Gabriel said, ignoring Miss Flax's glare. She did not like being left out of things, but he sensed the landlady was in a hurry to be rid of them. He wished to learn all that he could from her while he had the chance.

The landlady dug through boxes and buckets on the floor. “In this month or so past, she stayed out past curfew several times. I insist upon a strict curfew. Even these ballet girls who work late can be in by midnight, and I will not have my establishment going to the dogs like
some
. Mademoiselle Pinet claimed to have lost track of time, but that was not
like
her, you see, and she also seemed, as of late . . . haunted.”

“Haunted?”

Miss Flax pursed her lips with exasperation.

“
Wait
,” Gabriel whispered to her.

“Nerves,” the landlady said. “Almost on the verge of tears over her bread in the mornings, for no reason! And those dark circles round her eyes.” The landlady clucked her tongue. “Mixed up in bad business, sorry to say. Ah. Here we are.” She picked up a small wooden crate.

“Did you see her with any strange persons? Did she mention anything at all to you?”

“No. But it was as though all the color drained right out of her, and then . . . she was dead. Killed by a madman of the streets, I saw in the newspaper.”

“What was the name of the convent orphanage from which Mademoiselle Pinet came?”

The landlady passed Gabriel the crate. “I do not quite remember, but I fancy it had something to do with stars.”

*   *   *

“Stop keeping me
out of the conversation,” Ophelia grumbled to Penrose, once they were back on the street.

“She was anxious to be rid of us.”

“What did she say?”

He told her.

This time, Ophelia allowed Penrose to hire a carriage. She was eager to look into the crate of Sybille's possessions. Also, her feet were sore, but she'd never admit to
that
.

Once they'd climbed inside a carriage, Penrose lifted the crate's lid.

A woman's garments lay folded in a stack. Threadbare gowns, dingy petticoats, darned stockings, and a sad little pair of button boots that had been resoled even more times than Ophelia's own. Beneath the clothes, a tarnished hairbrush and comb, a few stray ribbons and buttons, a tiny French prayer book, and a wooden rosary. That was all.

“Guess they don't pay the ballet girls much,” Ophelia said. Sadness fell around her. Poor Sybille. Ophelia's life had been just as humble, but she had never been so desperately
alone
.

“There is nothing here to suggest that Miss Pinet had . . . admirers.”

“No. She probably would have had finer things, wouldn't she? Wait. What's this?” A bit of paper stuck against the inside of the crate. Ophelia wiggled it loose. A lavish engraving of flowers and lettering—all in French—covered one side.

“A florist's trade card. It lists its name and address, here in Paris.”

Ophelia flipped the card over. “Mercy.”

The back of the card said, in a lady's hurried hand,
Howard DeLuxe's Varieties Broadway
.

“That's where Prue and I worked—where
Henrietta
worked.”

“Is that Henrietta's handwriting?”

“I believe it is. What does this mean?”

“It suggests that at some point, Sybille Pinet met her mother.”

*   *   *

Ophelia reckoned that
riding about Paris in a closed carriage with a fellow was scandalous. But she knew that Penrose was an honorable gentleman. Besides which, her virtue was well-padded by the Mrs. Brand disguise. She asked Penrose to drop her two blocks from Hôtel Malbert.

“I ought not be seen alighting from mysterious carriages by any of the household,” she said to Penrose as the driver handed her down. “And would you keep Sybille's things? I don't wish to explain the crate to anyone. I do wish I could attend the
Cendrillon
ballet.” She paused. She detested asking for things. “Professor, perhaps you might go to the
Cendrillon
ballet—if you have the time, I mean to say—and inform me of any clues about the connection between Sybille's Cinderella getup and the ballet.”

“Perhaps you would join me. This evening?”

Ophelia considered. “I might be able to pull it off. I'll meet you in the opera house lobby just before eight o'clock, if I'm able.”

*   *   *

When Ophelia returned
to Hôtel Malbert, it was nearing one o'clock. The stepsisters were holed up in their salon—Ophelia heard them bickering through the doors. Baldewyn was polishing silver in the dining room. He did not greet Ophelia when she looked in, although his face grew instantly blotchy.

Baldewyn hadn't warmed to Mrs. Brand.

Prue wasn't upstairs. Ophelia searched for her, but only caught the lady's maid, Lulu, trying on Eglantine's fancy slippers in front of a mirror.

Ophelia finally found Prue in, of all places, the kitchen.

“Prue!” she cried. Prue bent over the plank table, sleeves rolled, hair like a tumbleweed, scrubbing away. “Where is Beatrice? Did you clean this whole kitchen yourself?”

“Sure did. It's taken all morning. Beatrice went out to market hours ago but she ain't come back. I reckon I'm supposed to cook luncheon, only I don't know how.”

“She's taking advantage.”

“Not everyone in the wide world is trying to take advantage of little old me, Ophelia Flax. Matter of fact”—Prue lifted her chin—“I'm learning housewifing. I wish to be useful for a change.”

“Anything that keeps you in the house and out of mischief is grand.” Ophelia told Prue how she'd encountered Professor Penrose.

“Penrose!” Prue glanced at Ophelia. “Yes. You look right rosy and giddy.”

“I'm wearing this sludgy face paint.”

“The giddy shines through. I
knew
he'd crop up again.”

“Bunkum.”

Ophelia told Prue everything she had learned about her sister, Sybille, and how Sybille had had Howard DeLuxe's name scribbled on the back of a card amongst her things.

“I'd bet my boots Ma was sending Sybille to go work for the Varieties,” Prue said. “She was always sending girls to Howard. Howard paid her a finder's fee for the good ones.”

“Your mother wouldn't take a finder's fee for her own daughter!”

“Maybe.”

“Why would Sybille wish to go to New York?”

“Don't know. Clean slate, maybe?” Prue kept scrubbing.

*   *   *

Once Gabriel was
established in an elegant suite of rooms in the Hôtel Meurice, he sent a note to Lord and Lady Cruthlach with a messenger boy. If anyone knew about a murder connected to “Cinderella,” it would be that ominous, fairy tale relic–collecting pair. Although Gabriel did not count Lord and Lady Cruthlach as friends, he had done business of sorts with them before, and their Paris address was recorded in his notebook.

While Gabriel waited for his answer, he enlisted the hotel concierge to make discreet inquiries as to whether a lady fitting Henrietta's description was registered in any of the finer hotels in Paris. He also requested that the concierge make a similar investigation into the passenger lists of steamships that had sailed from France in the last week. Henrietta could have left by rail or coach, but there was no way to check on that.

Then there was the matter of the convent in which Sybille Pinet had been schooled. The landlady had said its name had something to do with stars. He requested a list of every convent orphanage in Paris.

These inquiries would come at great expense to Gabriel, but he did not much care. He had inherited his father's vast estate along with his title, and having neither a wife nor any costly vices, he was somewhat at a loss as to how to spend it.

Next, Gabriel walked several blocks to the florist's shop of the trade card found in Miss Pinet's crate. The fashionable shop was perfumed by blooms that glowed like sickbed dreams in the cold, gray afternoon. It was warm inside, and thick with smartly dressed ladies. The shopkeeper merely laughed when Gabriel asked if he could recall a lady matching Henrietta's description. Customers were blurs to persons in such trades. A dead end, then.

When Gabriel returned to his hotel from the florist's shop, the messenger boy had his answer: Lord and Lady Cruthlach would gladly receive him. Immediately.

*   *   *

Lord and Lady
Cruthlach's mansion would have done rather nicely as an illustration in a gothic horror novel: pointed black turrets, leering monkey gargoyles, leaded windows, evil-looking spires. Up on the roof, crows bobbed up and down, cawing.

Gabriel rapped on the front door. When it opened, a red-haired ogre of a manservant filled the doorway. Hume. Gabriel had met him before, unfortunately. Hume's scarlet livery coat could have fit a bull. His knee breeches terminated in gold braid, and white silk stockings encased his Highland clansman's calves. His feet were shod in scarlet satin, Louis-heeled slippers as big as soup tureens.

“Good afternoon, Hume,” Gabriel said.

“His Lordship and Her Ladyship await, Lord Harrington,” Hume said in a gravelly Scots accent.

In the upstairs sitting room, draperies shut out the day. Upholstered furniture, carved tables, and sumptuous rugs clogged the stifling hot chamber. The throbbing, orange fire threw everything into velvety silhouette.

“He comes,” a creaky voice said. “Wake up, my love, he comes.”