by Maia Chance
“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.”
Hume took up a post against the wall.
Gabriel approached the fire. Two forms slumped side by side on a sofa.
“Lord and Lady Cruthlach,” Gabriel said. “How delightful to see you.” He had hoped never again to lay eyes on this accursed pair. “How long has it been? Two years? Three?”
“Three, dear Lord Harrington, three.” Lady Cruthlach tipped her undersized head and smiled, revealing teeth as perfect as a little child’s.
Ivory teeth, surely. Not . . . a little child’s.
Lady Cruthlach’s too-bright eyes sunk into her crumpled face. Her sparse yellowed hair was dragged back from an aristocratic, high forehead and fastened with jeweled hairpins. The jewels emphasized the shining flesh of her scalp.
Gabriel forced himself to kiss her mottled hand.
“Why,” Lord Cruthlach wheezed beside her, “why does he stand? Rohesia, why? He blocks the light. He blocks the warmth. My bones ache from the cold, Rohesia, oh!”
Legend had it that Athdar Crawley, Lord Cruthlach, had once been one of the tallest, proudest gentlemen in the Scottish peerage. Heaven only knew how long ago that had been, for now he resembled nothing so much as a suit of clothes abandoned on the cushions.
“Rohesia, they pain me again. My veins, they pain me. Oh, why does this blackguard block the warmth?”
“Drink?” Lady Cruthlach crowed to Gabriel. “And please, do sit.”
Gabriel sat. Sweat beaded beneath his arms and at the small of his back. “A drink would be splendid.”
Hume poured out tiny glasses of something at a sideboard. His bulky back concealed his operations.
Three drinks were brought forth on a tray.
Normally, Gabriel wouldn’t dream of accepting a drink from the Crawleys. He had heard whispers of foes found, necks snapped, at the base of Castle Margeldie’s battlements. Of a snooping Cambridge scholar sunk forever out of sight in a bog on their Highland estate. Of a nosy marchioness taken fatally ill after ingesting a slice of chocolate cake at their winter solstice dinner party in 1861.
Gabriel sipped. Putrid, medicinal sweetness, and it scalded all the way down. The four of them seemed to silently count together ten ticks of the mantelpiece clock. Gabriel did not topple to the carpet in convulsions.
Good, then.
7
Ophelia devoured two apples, a wedge of cheese, nearly half a loaf of bread, drank three glasses of water, and felt her spirits perk up. She left Prue in the kitchen—Prue would not be pried away from her scrubbing—and went upstairs to her chamber. She took the back staircase she’d discovered. Better not to let the entire household in on her comings and goings.
She set to work on a note to Inspector Foucher, using paper, envelope, fountain pen, and ink she kept in her carpetbag. The paper was crumply and the ink flaked. She described with as much detail as possible what she had learned about Sybille Pinet at the opera house and the boardinghouse.
A scream rang out. Then another, and another.
Ophelia dropped her pen. She followed the screams down to the stepsisters’ salon. She burst through the doors.
The screams stopped. Several pairs of eyes stared at Ophelia.
“Is everything quite all right?” Ophelia asked.
“Madame Brand,” Eglantine said. “Is it not the fashion to knock in Boston?” Eglantine stood upon a dressmaker’s stool. She was flushed, and she clutched a ripped piece of paper to her chest. Her pink moiré silk skirts half concealed two seamstresses who knelt at the hem, stitching.
“I beg your pardon, but I grew alarmed at the sound of screams.”
“That was Austorga,” Eglantine said.
Austorga sat on a sofa. Her sturdy shoulders rose and fell. Like her sister, she clutched a ripped piece of paper. In her other hand she held a large, square envelope.
“Was the screaming not Austorga, Mademoiselle Smythe?” Eglantine asked.
Miss Seraphina Smythe was the frail girl in owlish spectacles who had been playing the piano when Sybille’s body had been discovered. She sat beside Austorga on the sofa and she had just bitten into a chocolate bonbon. At Eglantine’s question, her jaws froze. She nodded.
“Screaming?” Mrs. Smythe, Seraphina’s mother, said in a vague voice, from the opposite sofa. She looked up from the pages of a book. “I did not hear anything.” Mrs. Smythe had also been in attendance at the stepsisters’ soirée on the evening of the murder. She was a stout lady with bleary blue eyes, attired in a smart visiting gown.
“You never do hear anything, Mother,” Seraphina said.
Mrs. Smythe did not seem to have heard. She resumed reading.
Mr. Smythe, Ophelia had been told, was some sort of diplomatic attaché from England. Seraphina and her mother, who had met Eglantine and Austorga at a public concert, spent a great deal of their time in the company of the stepsisters. Mrs. Smythe served as chaperone, and the stepsisters always spoke English in the presence of the Smythe ladies.
“Madame Brand,” Austorga said, “we have just been apprised of some most stimulating news.” She waved her piece of paper.
“Madame Brand does not wish, you uncouth twit, to hear of all the dull details of the, well, you know,” Eglantine said.
“It is not dull,” Austorga said. “You said yourself you thought you might swoon—”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, you ninny!” Eglantine shouted. It was unclear if she was speaking to her sister or to one of the seamstresses.
The company of Prue’s stepsisters was intolerable. Ophelia had dined enough with them in the past few days to be convinced of it. However, she had questions to ask.
She sat down next to Mrs. Smythe. Mrs. Smythe did not look up from her book. Ophelia glanced at the top of a page. Pride and Prejudice.
“Oh!” Seraphina cried. “Do be careful of Réglisse.”
“Réglisse?” Ophelia said.
A roly-poly black cat yawned beside Ophelia on the sofa.
“Good heavens,” Ophelia said. “I had taken him for a cushion. He is quite . . . well-fed.”
“Surely, Madame Brand,” Eglantine said, “you are able to sympathize.”
“So I can,” Ophelia said. “So I can. My dear, I have been meaning to ask, is there any news in the disappearance of your stepmother, Henrietta?”
“No,” Eglantine said.
“And no arrest of the murderer?”
“Must we speak of this?” Seraphina whispered.
“No arrest,” Eglantine said.
“And no more news of the dead girl’s identity?”
“What do we care of that little tart?” Eglantine said.
Seraphina gasped.
“I do wish you had not torn the letter!” Austorga shouted to Eglantine.
“It would not have torn if you had simply let go, as I instructed!” Eglantine shouted back.
Seraphina cowered. Mrs. Smythe turned a page of her book.
/> “He knows that I adore cream-colored paper,” Eglantine said, adopting a dreamy tone. “I told him last week when we sat in his box at the opera.”
“I said that I adored cream-colored paper, too!” Austorga said. “I said that cream was my very favorite color for theater programmes.”
“You said that Don Carlos was the dullest opera you had ever attended. You said it made you feel as though you were coming down with paralysis of the mind.”
“Not to him.”
“I believed you already had paralysis of the—”
“Pray tell,” Ophelia said, “of which gentleman do you girls speak?”
“No one,” Eglantine said.
“Prince Rupprecht,” Austorga said. “Simply the most handsome, cleverest gentleman in all of Europe.”
Mrs. Smythe suddenly looked up from her book. “Quite the eligible bachelor.” She threw an accusing look at her daughter.
“Everything the prince says is so marvelous,” Austorga said, “or so absolutely, hilariously funny that one must simply giggle and giggle and one cannot stop giggling.”
“You sounded like the parrot at the zoological gardens, when he was here for our soirée,” Eglantine said.
Prince Rupprecht had attended their soirée? He must’ve been either the strapping towhead with all the medals and ribbons, or the burly fellow with the lion’s mane.
“I had so hoped that we would not have to spoil sweet, precious Prudence’s stay in our household,” Eglantine said, “for you see, she will not be able to attend the ball on Saturday. It is a private event. If you must know—because I beg your pardon, Madame Brand, but you do seem to pry into our family affairs—”
The little snot.
“—a most fascinating missive came in the post today.”
“An invitation to the ball?” Ophelia asked.
“No, no,” Austorga said. “We were invited to the ball ages ago, and Mademoiselle Smythe, too. It is—”
“Today,” Eglantine said, “we received a supplement of sorts to the invitation, to the effect that Prince Rupprecht will make an important announcement at the ball.”