Cinderella Six Feet Under

by Maia Chance

  3

  Fourteen hours after Gabriel had first seen Miss Bright’s morgue drawing in The Times, his train chuffed and screeched into Gare du Nord in the middle of a sodden gray Paris morning.

  After leaving his study at St. Remigius’s College, Gabriel had made a ten-minute stop at his lodgings to fetch a valise of clothing, don a greatcoat, and give directions to his housekeeper. Then he had gone directly to London. From Charing Cross, he’d ridden the South-Eastern Railway to Folkestone. He had boarded, just in the nick of time, one of the night ferries that trundled back and forth across the Channel between Folkestone and Boulogne. Once in Boulogne, it was a few hours’ anxious wait for the first morning train to Paris.

  Gabriel had had a surfeit of hours to mull over a plan. So it was with a brisk step that he alighted from his first-class railway car and into the steamy hubbub of the gare. He was deaf to the babble of porters and hawkers, to the hisses of long, gleaming, eel-black trains. He was blind to the glass vaults above the platforms. He scarcely smelled the coal smoke, the whiffs of sweat, musky perfume, fresh bread, cinders, roses.

  His only thought was, after so many hours caged in railway compartments and trapped with his thoughts, that at last he could act.

  * * *

  Le Marais—“The Marsh”—on the right bank of the Seine, was a neighborhood that had been favored by blue bloods until about a century ago. Now its edges were tattered. The Roque-Fabliau mansion at 15 Rue Garenne was a grand private town house, what Parisians called an hôtel particulier, much to the confusion of British and American tourists. Hôtel Malbert was, by the looks of it, a seventeenth-century noble house in the style of Louis XIII. Pale yellow stone, rows of tall windows, steep slate roofs, Italianate pediments and cornices.

  Gabriel rapped thrice upon the front door. The knocker was shaped like a mouse’s head.

  Poetic touch.

  A prune-mouthed steward cracked the door several inches. “Oui?”

  “Good morning,” Gabriel said in French. “Is a young lady by the name of Miss Ophelia Flax within?”

  “No, indeed, monsieur, there is not. I have never heard of anyone by that name.”

  Where was Miss Flax, then? Still in Germany? Returned to America?

  “And the daughter of the house, the young American girl, is deceased as the newspapers claim?” Gabriel asked.

  “Regrettably, yes.” The steward shut the door an inch. “None of the family had ever made the girl’s acquaintance, however, so although it was a great shock to discover a corpse in the garden, it was not felt as a loss as such.”

  Unfeeling wretch.

  “I had hoped to locate the young American lady, Miss Flax, who had lately been traveling with the marquise’s daughter. Alas, I fear she has journeyed elsewhere. No matter. I still wish to speak with the marquis.”

  “Oh, you all wish to speak with Monsieur le Marquis.” The door closed another inch.

  Gabriel wedged his foot in the remaining space. “You misunderstand. I am not a gentleman of the press.” He drew a solid gold card case—a gift from his mother—from his inner jacket pocket and pushed his calling card through the crack.

  The steward took the card. “Lord Harrington, is it? My, my. One is able to purchase anything these days, is one not?” He returned the card. “My compliments to your engraver. Beautiful work.”

  Another gentleman of Gabriel’s station—his brother, for instance—would have cursed the steward, waved a cane about, made noisy demands. But Gabriel preferred more subtle tactics. He pulled his foot from the threshold. “Merci, monsieur.”

  The door thumped shut.

  Gabriel was not in the habit of thinking a great deal about what one might term his heart. He had attained the age of thirty-four without anyone in particular stepping forward to claim that organ, and he was glad of it. His academic work consumed him utterly.

  Yet, as he spoke to the driver of the hired cabriolet waiting at the curb, his heart constricted—or did it swell?—in his chest. Either way, it was behaving in a most uncomfortable and unaccountable fashion.

  He climbed into the cabriolet.

  What had he fancied? That he’d discover Miss Flax weak and weeping, that he’d drag her into his arms, rescue her like a knight errant?

  Utter piffle. Miss Flax was not, by any stretch of the fancy, a damsel in distress.

  His cabriolet rocked forward into the mist.

  * * *

  “Looks like they’re changing the lock on the carriageway gate this morning,” Ophelia said to Prue. “A locksmith is fiddling with it.”

  “Interesting,” Prue said, and yawned.

  “It is interesting.” Ophelia peered through the trickling windowpane. Her—or, properly speaking, Mrs. Brand’s—guest chamber looked down upon the mansion’s rear courtyard. The chamber itself was an Antarctic expanse of creaking parquet, moth-chewed tapestries, furniture with chipped gold paint, and a lopsided canopied bed that smelled of mildew and mouse. However, its windows afforded a bird’s-eye view. Ophelia preferred not to look at the matted vegetable patch, straight down, where they’d found that poor dead girl. But she could just see into the shadowy carriage arch, and a man with a toolbox was changing the gate’s lock. “It’s interesting for a couple of reasons. Prue—are you listening?” She glanced over her shoulder.

  “Course I’m listening.” Prue lolled on a brocade sofa. An ottoman-sized ginger cat lay in her lap. Prue popped a butterscotch drop into her mouth. “What’s so mighty interesting about some locksmith?”

  “Number one, when we went into the garden that night—”

  Prue sucked harder on her butterscotch.

  “—well, the gate was open. Not locked. Number two, the police said that they had identified the murderer—”

  “Still haven’t found him, though.”

  “It has been but two days.”

  “Feels like eternity. I got cabin fever, Ophelia.”

  Ophelia had cabin fever, too. But there was no use dumping kerosene on a fire. “Listen. The murderer was said to be a derelict who dwells in the streets here. So, he wouldn’t have had a key to the gate.”

  “You’re fishing for minnows.”

  “Something doesn’t sit right.” Ophelia turned to watch the locksmith some more. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “I know you caught a murderer back in Germany, but that don’t mean you ought to meddle again. Could be dangerous. Guess you ain’t concerned about danger, though, on account of your nerves got all frazzled out in the circus, standing on them trick ponies.”

  “I cannot continue to twiddle my thumbs in this damp prison of a house while Eglantine and Austorga frisk about with their friends to the dressmaker’s, the milliner’s, lectures, concerts, lessons in—what did they say?—elocution, deportment—”

  “Velocipede riding.”

  “Surely not! Dinners, soirées, the theater, the sweet shop—”

  “Austorga did bring me a bag of butterscotch drops, and some nice orange jellies. And they’re keen to find husbands so they need all them refinements.”

  “But they do not seem to care about that girl.”

  “My sister. Their sister, sort of.”

  “Yes. And your mother—it is as though she never existed. ‘Oh, she’ll be back!’ Malbert keeps saying, and your stepsisters look away.” Ophelia had even searched Henrietta’s bedchamber. It had been untidy, but it had offered up no clues as to her whereabouts. “The whole family is keeping things back, I’d wager. The servants, too.”

  “A spooky lot, that’s for sure,” Prue said.

  Ophelia plopped onto the dressing table stool. She had been disguised as Mrs. Brand every waking minute for the last two days. Her scalp itched under the wig, her muscles ached from hefting around the rump and bosom padding, and her skin was dry and sore from the crinkly cosmetics. “And
Malbert is downright peculiar.”

  “Looks like a mushroom that’s lost its cap, don’t he?”

  “What does he do in that workshop of his? No one seems to know. Not his daughters. Not the servants. When I asked him last night at dinner, he behaved in a most evasive fashion—did you ever see so much blinking and stammering?” The only thing Malbert had confessed was that he was the student of some famous clockmaker, but that he did not make clocks.

  Prue picked a loose blob of fluff from the cat and flicked it into the air. “Ma says all fellers is sneaky, and if you think they ain’t you’d best be double careful.”

  What a distressing notion.

  Ophelia got to work on her Mrs. Brand face. After that first night, she’d made certain to apply her greasepaint, and the flour paste that created the crepey effect, with a delicate hand so that it would stand up to close scrutiny. Heaven only knew how long she’d be stuck in this role, and now, well, there was no turning back.

  Behind her, Prue began to snore.

  When Ophelia had finished doctoring her face, she stashed her theatrical kit in the bottom of the wardrobe underneath a musty blanket. The housekeeper, Beatrice, had announced that no one would be cleaning their chambers, anyway, but Ophelia liked to be cautious.

  She went to the sofa and jiggled Prue’s woolen-stockinged toe. “Prue? Wake up, Prue. It’s time to go down to breakfast.” There was a hole in her stocking, at the heel. Poor Prue. Pretty as a princess, always in rags.

  Prue snuffled awake and lifted her head. “Huh? What is it? Is Ma back?”

  “No. Not yet. Are you coming to breakfast?” Ophelia’s eyes fell again on Prue’s stocking.

  “What?” Prue asked. “What are you gawping at my foot for?”

  “Merciful heavens,” Ophelia murmured. There had been something familiar about the dead girl’s foot, about the purple nails and that swollen jut on her big toe. “That is it. That is it.”

  * * *

  Ophelia found Malbert hunched behind a newspaper at the breakfast table and demanded that he send at once for the police inspector. Malbert sent a note with an errand boy and returned to his newspaper.

  Ophelia dug into her breakfast of coffee, buttery rolls, pungent cheese, ham, and hothouse oranges. Prue had probably gone back to sleep.

  “I happened to notice a locksmith working on the carriageway gate this morning,” Ophelia said.

  Malbert slowly lowered his newspaper. “Oui?”

  “Might I inquire why?”

  “Madame Brand, you are most curious, non? What is it that they say about the cat and curiosity?” He blinked twice and raised his newspaper again.

  Was that a threat?

  Inspector Foucher, from the office of the commissaire, arrived at half past eight. Ophelia and Malbert received him in a formal salon. Foucher was one of those fellows with twig legs and a barrel chest. Small brown eyes like chocolate drops peered out from a swollen face. He held a bowler hat.

  “Madame Brand,” he said in a weary tone, “I am a busy man. What is it?”

  “Has the murderer been arrested yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Ah. Well, I have made a most fascinating realization that might aid in your investigation. Her feet, you may recall—or, at least, the one that I saw—were in a most pitiful condition.”

  “The girl’s feet were injured, oui.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Oui, as the result of her body having been dragged to its place in the garden.”

  “I have a different theory. I propose that she was a dancer of the ballet.”

  Malbert shifted in his chair.

  “The ballet!” Foucher chuckled.

  “I do not jest, Inspector. The feet of ballerinas are subject to the most grievous ill-treatment and injury as the result of supporting their entire weight upon the very tips of their toes.” Ophelia had seen it dozens of times, both in the circus and the theater. One dancer she’d known, Florrie, had had bunions like ripe crabapples.

  Inspector Foucher frowned. “How, may I inquire, does a respectable lady like you know what the feet of a ballerina look like?”

  “Oh, well.” Ophelia smoothed her cuff. “In Boston, you see, I am a member of the Ladies’ League for the Betterment of Fallen Angels.”

  “How charitable,” Malbert murmured.

  Ophelia leaned towards Foucher. “There are many fallen angels, you understand, employed in the theater.”

  “Ah, oui.”

  “I urge you, Inspector, to consider searching for the deceased young lady’s identity within whatever ballet theaters Paris possesses.”

  “You almost seem to know who the victim was.”

  “I do not. But it is worth investigating the ballet theaters, is it not?”

  “Madame, I do understand that you are discomfited by this event. However, I must request that you do not intrude in police investigations. Indeed, I do realize that the gentle sex is prone to fancy, to making correlations where there are none—”

  “Applesauce!”

  “—but we officers of the police are trained to be rationale.”

  “What of the coincidence of the perished girl being placed in her own mother’s garden? And what, for that matter, are you doing in the way of locating the Marquise Henrietta? I must most emphatically suggest that the two concerns must be related, even, perhaps, interlocking.”

  “Madame, I bid you good morning.” Foucher made a stiff bow and dodged out.

  Ophelia stared after him. Then she looked at Malbert sitting lumpishly in his chair. “It is an outrage!” she said. “It is almost as though—yes, it is as though the police are deliberately averting their eyes from any evidence that does not fit their theory. Rationale? Horsefeathers! That Foucher is a buffoon, or lazy. Or both.”

  “Madame Brand, I beg you to calm yourself. Come. Join me for a stroll in the garden. I would be most interested to hear of your charitable work in Boston.”

  Ophelia stared at Malbert. Did the recent presence of a corpse in his garden not trouble him in the least? All of a sudden, Ophelia made up her mind: it was time to take matters into her own hands. To Tartarus with the police! She would discover the dead girl’s identity; she would learn where Henrietta had gone.

  “No, thank you,” Ophelia said to Malbert. “I’ve just remembered a most pressing engagement.”

  She hurried upstairs to her chamber. Prue was snoozing with the cat.

  Ophelia cleaned her teeth at the washbasin. Then she dug the Baedeker and her reticule out of her carpetbag, tied on her black taffeta bonnet, and shrugged on her woolen cloak. Downstairs, she found an umbrella and trooped out of the house.

  4

  When Prue woke up, the ginger cat was purring on top of her, but Ophelia was gone.

  Good.

  She struggled to a seat. She seesawed her precious letter, Hansel’s letter, out from under the cat and smoothed the puckers. Her eyes roved to the first troubling spot:

  I do not wish you to suppose, dear Miss Bright, that when we last parted at Schloss Grunewald we had formed what one might call an understanding. That I hold you in the highest esteem goes, I daresay, without saying. But you are a very young lady, and until I have completed my medical studies and secured a living for myself, I could never presume to consider any lady, however our attachment might be felt or comprehended, as anything but free.

  Prue read this line for about the hundred and tenth time. She still wasn’t exactly sure she’d caught Hansel’s meaning. The line was so cluttered up with commas and genteel words, she didn’t know if she had it by the head or by the slick tail. Was he saying they’d have an “understanding” someday, in the future? Or was this his way of telling her to scoot off?

  Prue fluttered away tears, and reread the letter’s second troubling spot:

  Frau Berin
ger (She was the landlady of Hansel’s student boardinghouse in Heidelberg, Germany) keeps such a spotless house, it is truly a marvel. I do not believe I have met with such a fine housekeeper before, and I hope someday to be the master of such a gracious and meticulous household.

  These lines pained Prue, fresh little heart stabbings each time she read them. Prue wouldn’t be able to make a doll’s house gracious and meticulous, let alone a real house. Ma had never taught her how.

  Ma. Still missing. Her dead sister, gone forever. And Hansel acting just as sneaky as any other feller.

  One fat tear plopped onto the letter. The ink of the word spotless blurred.

  * * *

  Ophelia may as well have been in Timbuktu, for all she knew about Paris. The Baedeker map had a crease straight through Le Marais, the streets ran higgledy-piggledy, and the rain was coming down in buckets. But she found her way to a bustling thoroughfare called Rue de Rivoli. She rechecked the map. Yes. It looked to lead straight to the Louvre. From the Louvre she could walk to Rue le Peletier, where the opera house was.

  Because opera houses, Ophelia well knew, were where ballerinas were to be found.

  She paid thirty centimes for an inside seat in a horse-drawn double decker. She had changed some of her hard-won German money for French at the train station the other day. Inside, the omnibus was entirely taken up by ladies’ bobbing crinolines, which was probably why all the gentlemen fled to the open-air upper level despite the rain.

  Ophelia rubbed at the foggy window with her fist, but she couldn’t see much. Black carriages, black umbrellas, black hats, bare black trees. Tight-packed old buildings with shutters and awnings. Steep roofs, jumbly chimneys, dripping gargoyles.

  A queasy half hour passed. When Ophelia saw the looming side of what she guessed was the Louvre, she piled off the omnibus with a bunch of other folks, snapped open her umbrella, and set off on foot.

  The opera house, called Salle le Peletier (however you pronounced that one) was built of white stone, with rows of pillars and arches and a shining-wet paved square out front.