Cinderella Six Feet Under

by Maia Chance

  The three men didn’t notice Ophelia and Penrose, following at a distance. They spoke in low, anxious tones. They came to an open doorway. Beyond lay a huge, dim room filled with costume-stuffed racks. The three men went inside.

  Ophelia and Penrose hid themselves just outside the doorway.

  “The wardrobe,” Ophelia whispered. “In the theater it’s a room, not a piece of furniture.”

  “Ah.”

  They looked in.

  The three men stood between two rows of garment racks straight ahead, looking down at a heap of something on the floor. No, not a heap of something. A heap of someone. Of Caleb Grant.

  “They are saying that he has been shot in the heart,” Penrose whispered to Ophelia.

  One of the gendarmes whipped out a handkerchief, crouched, and picked up something.

  “He says that is the murder weapon,” Penrose whispered.

  The gendarme held up a small, silver-colored pistol. The cylinder flopped open and a bullet clinked on the floor.

  “We had better go,” Penrose said.

  * * *

  Truth be told, when Prue escaped the Cruthlach mansion it wasn’t the first time she’d snuck out a window. But the first time had been with Hansel, and she’d been in love. Seemed it wasn’t exactly right to go sneaking out windows with a feller you weren’t in love with. Or—wait. Did that rule only apply when the feller was sneaking in?

  Dalziel had placed a ladder outside—it seemed he was as capable as a soldier—and then he’d come to the chamber where Prue was locked up and helped her down to the murky courtyard. A carriage was waiting in the street. Dalziel handed her up.

  “That was as easy as falling off a log,” Prue said, breathless.

  Dalziel stepped up into the carriage beside her and slammed the door. The carriage started forward. “I’ve had a bit of practice.”

  “You don’t say so!”

  Dalziel smiled in the dark. “Grandmother has always desired to keep a close watch on me, ever since I was a baby. She said she was afraid the fairies were going to steal me back.”

  Fairies?

  The drive to the cemetery took only ten minutes or so. Prue had just nodded off when the carriage stopped and Dalziel said, “We are here.”

  * * *

  “It is a lady we want,” Professor Penrose said.

  Ophelia and Penrose stood in the shadows on an uneven cobbled sidewalk. Across the street, the opera house blazed with light. Only a few carriages rolled by. Overhead, the moon floated behind quick, silvery clouds.

  “Because of the lady’s handwriting on the death threat, you mean,” Ophelia said.

  “Yes. We are able to rule out the derelict the police are after, for surely he doesn’t have the foresight to write letters in a feigned hand, let alone deliver them.”

  “The police said that man preys upon ladies of ill-repute, too. Which Mr. Grant wasn’t.”

  “We are also able to rule out Madame Babin and Polina Petrov . . . Miss Flax, you are shaking. Might I lend you my greatcoat?”

  “I’ve got my mantle. Well, Henrietta’s mantle.” Ophelia held it up. “It’s only nerves. I always used to get nerves onstage, too, whenever I had a big role. It’ll pass.” She blotted the lumpy shape of Caleb Grant’s corpse from her mind, along with the notion that if she hadn’t gotten sidetracked by Madame Babin in the wings, she might’ve prevented his death. “It looked like a lady penned the death threat, but couldn’t a lady have written it out for a gentleman murderer? Or couldn’t a gentleman have pretended a feminine hand?”

  “Yes. Although it is noteworthy that Grant was shot with a lady’s pistol—did you see how dainty it was? I believe I even glimpsed floral décor carved on the barrel.”

  “A gentleman could shoot a lady’s pistol.”

  “True. Did you see how the cylinder fell open to the right when the gendarme held it up?”

  “I’m no crackerjack sharpshooter, Professor.”

  “It was a left-handed pistol.”

  “Oh.”

  “The cylinder opens on the right because the shooter holds the gun and pulls the trigger with the left hand, and loads with the right.”

  “So the murderer is a southpaw.”

  “Perhaps. Or simply a person who possessed, for some reason, a southpaw’s gun.”

  The professor’s accent made southpaw sound like the name of a fancy aperitif.

  “One thing is certain,” Ophelia said. “The murderer is killing because of the stomacher.”

  “It does seem so.”

  “Do you think Henrietta is dead?”

  Penrose studied her, concern shining in his eyes. “Perhaps,” he finally said. “She might have gained access to the stomacher herself at one point, and paid the price.”

  Ophelia hugged Henrietta’s mantle and caught a faint whiff of Henrietta’s perfume. If Ophelia could have cried, now would’ve been a fine time. But she hadn’t shed a tear for longer than she could remember.

  She must’ve made a face, though, because Penrose frowned. “Miss Flax, perhaps it would be wise if you ceased poking about in this affair.”

  “Now is the time to buckle down and go at it even harder.”

  “You might place yourself in unnecessary danger.”

  “I’ll be the judge. I’m not a child.”

  “The police—”

  “They’re incompetent. Stubborn. Blind! I told you what Inspector Foucher wrote about our discovery of Sybille’s identity. He ought to be a circus sideshow: The Insensible Man. No. I’ve undertaken to figure out what happened to Henrietta, and I’m not about to stop now simply on account of the water’s gotten higher.”

  “And finding this—this murderer, of two people now, if it is indeed the same culprit, that will bring you to the solution of Henrietta’s disappearance?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Penrose gazed at Ophelia for such a long moment, she wondered if she had chocolate somewhere on her face. At last, he said, “I told you that I would help you, and so I shall. I must have time to think of what is the wisest course.”

  “We must have time to think.”

  He smiled a little. “We. Now, won’t you please allow me to hire a carriage to return you to Hôtel Malbert? Then you must rest. The past two days have been fatiguing for you. I see it in your face.”

  Ophelia wasn’t what you’d call a vain lady. Years of experience in the circus ring and on the stage had taught her that beauty is an illusion, as fleeting as a magic lantern show. But still, did she really look so tuckered out?

  “I’ll walk.”

  “At this time of the evening?”

  “Can’t be more than two miles.” Ophelia’s pinched toes, in Henrietta’s tiny slippers, cursed her.

  “Then I shall walk with you. A murderer is afoot, my dear.”

  Yes, and Ophelia’s feet were murder.

  * * *

  A high, moon-sheened stone wall surrounded the Montparnasse Cemetery. Dalziel instructed the driver to wait. He led Prue through iron gates that hung, half open, from thick pillars. Beyond the gates sprawled gravestones, tombs, and statues, glowing pale against the shadows.

  Wind rippled. Bare trees rattled. The air smelled of fresh-dug dirt—or was that just Prue’s fancy? She shivered, despite the shawl that Dalziel had brought for her. Or maybe because of the shawl, which stank a little of camphor and probably belonged to Lady Cruthlach.

  “I confess I took the liberty of visiting here earlier, after I called upon the convent,” Dalziel said. His voice was carried off by a twirl of wind. “Her grave is along this way.”

  “All right,” Prue said. She swallowed. “Sure.”

  She stuck close to Dalziel all the way along a cobble-paved avenue, and then down a smaller, sandy path that sliced through rows of graves like an aisle in
a shop. Moonlight brightened the sky and bounced off the statues—mostly of dead bodies and cherubs and such. She nearly jumped out of her boots when a cat skittered across the way.

  A few raindrops started smacking down.

  “Here,” Dalziel said softly. He slowed, and pushed his hands in his pockets.

  A big, stone rectangle lay between two others, piled around with fresh, black dirt. A bunch of lilies drooped on top. The headstone said—Prue could see it clearly in the moonlight—

  Ici Repose

  Sybille Pinet

  1846–1867

  “She must have been beloved by the sisters in the convent,” Dalziel said. “This is a costly grave.”

  Prue nodded, numb. Now it felt—what? More real? That couldn’t be it. Nothing had felt more real than Sybille’s chilly, rained-on skin in the garden that night.

  “It’s the end,” Prue said. “I never got to meet her, and now it’s the end.” Cold tears dripped down her face along with the rainwater.

  Dalziel wrapped his arms about her and although he was not a large fellow, he felt wiry and strong under the soft wool of his greatcoat. He smelled a little like cinnamon, too. Prue started sobbing. For herself, but also for her missing ma, and for Sybille, forever lost.

  After a few minutes, the sobs left off and Prue opened her eyes. Her breath caught. “Someone’s here,” she mumbled against Dalziel’s shoulder.

  He spun around, placing himself in front of Prue.

  A figure with an umbrella stepped out from behind a marble angel. Something white flashed around the face.

  By gum, it was a nun. A nun in a flowing black habit and a white—what was it? Oh, yes—a white wimple. Once in Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties, Prue had been one of a whole chorus line of naughty nuns who favored red stockings. But surely this nun wouldn’t be caught dead in anything but soot-black socks.

  The nun drew close and spoke briskly in French. Her eyes fixed on Prue’s face. Sourness puckered her mouth, yet her eyes were kind.

  Dalziel turned to Prue. “She says her name is Sister Alphonsine, of the Pensionnat Sainte Estelle. She came here to lay flowers upon the grave and hid when she saw us coming. She asks if you are the twin sister of Sybille, because she prepared Sybille with her own hands for burial, so she knows that she is truly dead. Shall I tell her that you are her sister?”

  “Sure. Tell her everything.” Everyone trusted nuns, right?

  Sister Alphonsine gripped her umbrella hard as she spoke with Dalziel, and her eyes kept darting back to Prue.

  “She says you are in danger,” Dalziel said.

  “Danger! Does she know anything about my ma?”

  “No. I asked her. But she says that because you look so much like Sybille, the murderer could strike again.”

  “That’s what the police said. Wait. Ask her why she didn’t tell the police who Sybille was.”

  Dalziel asked her. Sister Alphonsine did some more sharp talking.

  “She says that she wrote to the police, to someone called Inspector Foucher, and informed him of Sybille’s identity, but he never replied. She begs that you stay at the convent, where you will be safe, until the murderer is caught.”

  “Bunk in a convent?” How Ma would laugh at that one. “I’ll be just fine—as long as your grandmother and Hume leave me be.”

  Sister Alphonsine looked like she wished to say more, but after a long hesitation she crunched away on the path. She stole one last look over her shoulder before she swished out of sight around a tomb.

  “Are you ready to go?” Dalziel asked. “Her talk of murderers has made me feel wary. I ought not keep you out any longer.”

  Prue gazed one last time at Sybille’s headstone. “I’m ready.”

  19

  Dalziel ordered the driver—a hired driver, not Lord and Lady Cruthlach’s—to go to Hôtel Malbert by way of the Pensionnat Sainte Estelle.

  The nunnery was on a corner: a tall, spiked iron fence and bare bushes, with a blocky stone building behind.

  “If the occasion should arise that you needed to know of its location,” Dalziel said.

  “You ought to train to be a lawyer,” Prue muttered.

  “I intend to, once I have completed my studies at the Sorbonne.” Dalziel smiled.

  His smile was too fetching, and Prue flicked her gaze out the window. She had no business admiring Dalziel’s beautiful black eyes and white teeth. She was in love with Hansel. Wasn’t she?

  Ma had always said, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Well actually, she’d said a man in the hand (and then she’d trill with laughter). Was Prue’s admiration for Dalziel proof that she was becoming . . . just like Ma?

  When Prue knocked on the front door of Hôtel Malbert because there was no other way to get in, Baldewyn opened it. Lucky he never asked questions. He only looked a little shirty. Prue bolted upstairs.

  Sleep came hard. Prue shivered, even with the fat ginger cat purring like a locomotive on top of her and a nice coal fire winking in the grate. She couldn’t stop seeing Sybille’s headstone, all mixed up with the jerky motions and pearl-tooth grins of a dozen windup Cinderellas.

  * * *

  Gabriel bade Miss Flax farewell and watched her crawl through a sidewalk-level window into the cellar of Hôtel Malbert. He would have liked to help her, but she insisted upon doing it herself. There was a thump—had she fallen?—and then she lifted up a hand to the window in farewell.

  No other lady in the world was quite like Miss Flax.

  Gabriel turned up the collar of his greatcoat and began the long walk to his hotel.

  * * *

  Ophelia propped her feet on the grate in her bedchamber. The heat relieved her cold, crunched toes. It was near midnight, she estimated, but sleep would not come. After she’d clambered back through the cellar window (it had been most humiliating to have the professor watch her do that), she had checked on Prue and the ginger cat—both sound asleep—and readied herself for bed. She’d heard Malbert and the stepsisters noisily arrive. After that, the house fell silent.

  Malbert and the stepsisters had been at the opera house tonight. Each one of them might have a reason to kill for the stomacher. After all, it was their family heirloom. Ophelia was only a little comforted by the notion that the murderer wouldn’t do Prue or her any harm, since it was the stomacher the murderer was after. Still, being under the same roof as that bunch was downright eerie.

  Ophelia mulled things over. There had to be something she’d missed, some crucial ingredient that would make it all firm up and set, like calf’s-foot jelly in fruit preserves.

  There was the lawyer. They hadn’t been able to speak with him, and Ophelia had never managed to have a cozy chat with Malbert in order to extract any divorce secrets. But other than that, all of this business about the ballet and the Cinderella stomacher? Befuddling.

  Except.

  Except Malbert always seemed removed, as though the events around him did not quite touch him. But what if he were really the center of it all? Henrietta, after all, was his wife. Sybille’s corpse had been found just outside his workshop. The stomacher that everyone was so interested in belonged by rights to Malbert, and had come from his bank box. Malbert had even had the opportunity, perhaps, to shoot Caleb Grant at the opera house tonight.

  Ophelia sat forward. What was it Austorga had said at the exhibition this afternoon? Something about Malbert and inventions? Oh, yes: something like, Danger is the price one pays for scientific advancement.

  Danger. Sybille had met with danger, and so had Caleb Grant.

  Yes. It was high time Ophelia took a gander at Malbert’s workshop.

  She lit a taper, drew on her shawl, and tiptoed though dark corridors and stairs to his workshop. She knocked softly on the door, but there was no reply. Good thing, too, since she wasn’t in her Mrs. Brand disguise.
r />   She twisted the knob. It gave.

  Well. Surely if Malbert stored diabolical things in his workshop, he’d keep the door locked.

  Inside, wet wax extinguished her taper. Smoke and darkness filled her eyes. She should’ve brought spare matches.

  She blinked. Her eyes adjusted. The draperies were open, admitting fragile moonbeams that glinted off bits of metal on the table. When Ophelia had spied upon Malbert through the window last week, her impression had been of piles of mechanical disarray. Now she saw that the piles were sorted: springs in one, bolts in another, and so on. She squinted. There certainly could be the makings of a pistol in there—a left-handed pistol—but she couldn’t be sure. She picked up a box, like the one Malbert had been tinkering with the other night. It was a hollow metal cube, big enough for a large apple to fit inside, and one end was open. Peculiar.

  Ophelia noticed a wooden cabinet against the wall. One door was wedged open a few inches. She replaced the metal cube on the table.

  She went to the cabinet and opened the door. The hinges squeaked.

  Once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that the cupboard’s shelves were bare, except for—

  A sob of horror fell out of her mouth.

  Except for a glass jar the size of a small butter churn, filled with brownish liquid like a brining jar. Except there weren’t any gherkins or dills in this jar. No. In this jar, two fair, dainty feet bobbed inside. A lady’s feet. In a brining vat.

  Ophelia slammed the cupboard door. She couldn’t breathe.

  Henrietta. Were those Henrietta’s feet? Had she requested a divorce, and Malbert had retaliated with—with what? Murder? Or was Henrietta held captive somewhere, missing her feet?

  Ophelia’s guts heaved. She hustled out of the workshop as fast as her own blessedly attached feet could carry her.

  * * *

  Gabriel breakfasted early in Hôtel Meurice’s dining room. His night had been a torment of tangled bedclothes and twisting thoughts. He felt like he’d had too much wine but the truth was, he’d had too much Miss Flax.

  Telling her of Miss Ivy Banks had seemed a brilliant antidote to the distraction that she, Miss Flax, posed. Obviously, Gabriel could not even begin to think of marrying Miss Flax (the very idea!) and he refused to become like that repulsive Lord Dutherbrook and take an actress for a mistress. Which, of course, was an utterly laughable idea in itself. Although Miss Flax was bold beyond all comprehension, she would never be any man’s mistress. Of that, Gabriel was certain.