Cinderella Six Feet Under

by Maia Chance

  “Shall I wake her?” Penrose asked.

  “No. Let’s search the house.”

  For once, the professor didn’t argue.

  Ophelia and Penrose raced through the mansion, room by room. In one chamber, they saw Lord Cruthlach asleep in a huge sleigh bed. They saw rooms filled with rich furnishings, empty rooms, and rooms cluttered with trunks and broken chairs and bric-a-brac.

  But no Prue.

  “The cellar,” Ophelia said. She stopped in the corridor, half bent, panting. “We must check the cellar.”

  They clattered down a stone stairwell and found the kitchen.

  Bitter-smelling steam clouded the kitchen. A huge iron pot sputtered on the stove. The table was a hodgepodge of bottles and bowls, heaps of green leaves, and paper boxes. A small, brownish-green turtle wandered across.

  “What’s cooking?” Ophelia said. “Witch’s brew?” She picked up the turtle. “You poor thing. I won’t allow them to boil you.”

  The turtle shrank into its shell.

  Hume emerged from an arched stone doorway near the stove. He held a big wooden spoon like a bludgeon. “I suppose you didn’t find what you were looking for?”

  “The girl,” Penrose said.

  “No girl here.”

  “Where is the serving woman?”

  “No serving woman here.”

  “Don’t tell me you do all the work yourself.”

  “I am the most loyal of servants.”

  “Would you kill for your master and mistress?”

  “If they instructed me to do so.”

  “Did you kill Sybille Pinet and Caleb Grant?”

  Hume’s eyes flicked to something on the table and back to Penrose.

  A thick, age-splotted book lay open on the table amid the jars and bowls and funny ingredients. That’s what Hume had glanced at. Only a receipt book, surely. But then, why did Ophelia have the sense that all of Hume’s attention, all the fibers in his bulky body, were fastened tight to that book?

  “What’s in the book?” Ophelia asked.

  Beside her, the professor tensed.

  * * *

  When Miss Flax said book, Gabriel recognized in an instant all that he had overlooked. Lord and Lady Cruthlach had never desired the stomacher. What they desired was this book.

  Gabriel had read of it, once. Mediocris Maleficorum. What a layman might simply call the Fairy Godmother’s spell book. It had been Gabriel’s understanding that the book—if it existed—was either an originary text of unimaginable power, or an intricate hoax.

  Gabriel leaned over the book.

  A thrill, almost painful, coursed up the nerves of his fingers and straight to his heart, which pumped still faster. Handwritten. Latin. Small, woodcut illustrations. The receipt at the top of the page read: Elixir Vitae XIII. An elixir of life.

  Then, a sharp crack at the base of Gabriel’s skull. Hume’s spoon. Pain vibrated. Gabriel staggered forward and Hume whisked the spell book off the table just before Gabriel went sprawling across the top. Miss Flax cried out. Glass and porcelain vessels crashed. Something splatted on Gabriel’s cheek.

  Hume strode towards a doorway with the spell book tucked under his arm.

  “You really don’t think, man, that you’ll bring those two corpses back to life?” Gabriel yelled after him.

  But there was no answer. Hume was gone.

  * * *

  “Don’t panic, Miss Flax,” the professor said as they swung out the front doors of the Cruthlach mansion. He was still wiping a slimy green smear from his cheek with his handkerchief.

  Ophelia was on the verge of panic. She was sweating under her wig and she clutched the turtle to her chest. “I had it fixed in my head that this was where we’d find Prue. If she’s not here, she could be anywhere.” Oh dear Lord, Prue couldn’t, couldn’t be hurt. “Is your head all right, Professor? Shall I have a look?”

  “Quite all right,” Penrose said quickly. “We’ve two more obvious possibilities—at least, if we are still operating under the assumption that the stomacher is central to the question of every death and disappearance.”

  “Maybe Henrietta whisked Prue away—couldn’t that be it? Couldn’t she be safe and sound with her mother somewhere?” Ophelia heard the shrill edge in her own voice.

  Penrose gingerly rubbed the back of his head, where Hume had conked him with the spoon. “Yes. Yes, that would certainly be—”

  “You don’t think Prue is—that she’s a goner, do you?” Fury suddenly bubbled in Ophelia. “I’ll find who took her, and I’ll—I’ll make them sorry!”

  “We’ll go to visit Colifichet in his shop. That is the first order of business. He has evidently seen the stomacher. He knows, because of the ballet, that the stomacher is related to the story of ‘Cendrillon.’ And most important, at one point or another Colifichet must have encountered Sybille Pinet.”

  22

  COLIFICHET & FILS, the gilt lettering on one of the arched windows read. The carriage stopped at the curb.

  “Are you ready, Miss Flax?” Penrose asked.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?” Ophelia gently touched the turtle, who she’d placed on the seat. “The little fellow hasn’t so much as glanced out since I picked him up in that kitchen.”

  “You rescued him from certain death. Perhaps he requires time to recover his equilibrium.”

  They got out. Lustrous teal velvet lined Colifichet’s display windows. Toys of gilt, enamel, silk, colored jewels, brass, and human hair nestled in the velvet. There were monkeys in jesters’ costumes, a doll seated at a tiny harpsichord, a crouched tiger, several grinning acrobats, a rabbit with a drum, and a donkey in a three-piece suit. But no Cinderellas—although there was a Wicked Wolf, covered in what looked like real dog’s fur, attired in Granny’s nightgown and cap.

  “I’d never give one of those things to a child in all my livelong days,” Ophelia said.

  “They would surely inspire nightmares,” Penrose said. “And you haven’t yet seen them wound up and whirring about.”

  Inside, the shop smelled faintly of the grease P. Q. Putnam’s Traveling Circus had used to slick the carousel gears. A portly shopkeeper in a green coat was helping a lady at a display case. The shopkeeper placed a tiny camel on the countertop. Slowly, and with a soft clicking, it walked across the counter.

  The shopkeeper said something in French to Penrose.

  “He says he will assist us in a moment,” Penrose said to Ophelia.

  They waited.

  A slim form emerged from the rear of the shop.

  Pierre, Colifichet’s apprentice. He appeared to be searching for something behind one of the counters.

  Ophelia made a beeline for Pierre. His eyes flared. “Just the gentleman I wished to see,” she said in an imperious tone. “Or, one of the gentlemen—pray tell, boy, where is your master, Monsieur Colifichet?”

  Pierre’s jaw drooped, sullen.

  “Where is Monsieur Colifichet?” Ophelia repeated. “I know that you speak English—Lord Harrington here told me as much.”

  “Monsieur Colifichet is working,” Pierre said. His eyes darted to the shopkeeper, still nattering to the lady customer, then back to Ophelia. “Why is it, madame, that you wished to see him?”

  Ophelia ignored Penrose’s warning glance. With Prue missing, this was no time to mince words. “It concerns the matter of a stomacher. Cinderella’s stomacher, to be precise. Oh yes—and two disappeared ladies, and two murders.”

  “A stomacher? Murder?” Pierre cocked his head. “Mais oui, that sounds precisely the sort of thing in which my master would be interested.”

  Ophelia and Penrose exchanged an amazed look.

  Pierre lowered his voice. “I have, in truth, noticed a stomacher in Monsieur Colifichet’s workshop.”

  “Hidden?”r />
  Pierre nodded, and leaned closer. “In a cabinet. Locked up. Is it important?”

  “Very,” Ophelia said.

  “I shall bring you to my master, but I am certain he will not admit to possessing the stomacher.”

  Pierre beckoned them behind the counter and through a curtain. The shopkeeper didn’t notice. Pierre led them down a gloomy corridor and paused in front of a closed door.

  “I must warn you, Monsieur Colifichet has not slept in two days. The special project he has been working on is not going as well as he would like. There have been a few small, unforeseen problems.” Pierre opened the door.

  “Allez-vous en!” Colifichet screamed.

  * * *

  Colifichet perched on a tall stool at a draughtsman’s table, hunched with a pencil and ruler.

  He held his pencil in his right hand, Gabriel noted. Not his left.

  Tidy workshop benches stored tools and glimmering little metal things. Weak white light slanted through tall windows. In the far corner, black cloth shrouded four or five tall, bulky forms.

  “What is the meaning of this interruption?” Colifichet asked in French. He got down from his stool, fists balled, jaw unshaven, shirt untucked. “I told you that I was not to be disturbed under any circumstance. You again, Lord Harrington. Is this your nursemaid, perhaps?” He sent a scornful glance to Miss Flax in her dumpy disguise.

  “Allow me to do the talking just this once,” Gabriel murmured to Miss Flax.

  Miss Flax, uncharacteristically silent, nodded.

  “They insisted upon coming to see you,” Pierre said to Colifichet. “They pushed me aside and forced their way in. I attempted to stop them.”

  “That is not precisely the way I would describe it,” Gabriel said. Why was the apprentice lying? “It is about a trinket I happened to view today.”

  “Trinket?” Colifichet massaged his eye sockets. “Pray, do not call the fruit of my labors a trinket.”

  “A music box, then. In the house of Lord and Lady Cruthlach. Its toy dancer was in the form of Cendrillon, dressed in a miniature costume precisely like that in the ballet playing at the opera house.”

  “Lord and Lady Cruthlach commissioned that music box—and, I must add, they are both quite, quite senile. I simply built it to their specifications.”

  “Oh, indeed? When was this?”

  “A year ago or more. I cannot recall. In fact, it was Pierre who built all but the interior mechanism of that piece.”

  “Were either of you at all surprised when the ballerina’s Cinderella costume happened to be identical to that of the doll on the music box?”

  Pierre’s eyes were empty.

  Colifichet sniffed. “I pay no attention whatever to ballet costumes. My work concerns the stage sets. The rest—mmn!—it is women’s rubbish.”

  “What of the fact that the music box figure resembles, to an uncanny degree, the murdered girl Sybille Pinet? I was told she worked as an artist’s model at one point. Did she model for you?”

  “No. I do not use models.”

  “That is rather difficult to believe.”

  “Believe whatever you wish, Lord Harrington. I do not much care. As for the Cinderella figure on the music box, well, it possesses an insipid sort of beauty. A beauty with every distinguishing characteristic quite refined out of it until all that is left is a rather bland perfection. A living girl, with all of a living girl’s flaws, simply cannot compete with the cool perfection of art.”

  “A pretty speech, Monsieur Colifichet, but quite beside the point. I’ll ask you directly: did you send a woman to steal a young lady from the house of the Marquis de la Roque-Fabliau today?”

  “Mon Dieu, your accusations grow more and more curious. Do I appear to have any interest whatsoever in young ladies? Now, if you do not mind, I must return to my work. And you, Pierre—stay. We must get that leg just so. You, madame et monsieur, may show yourselves out—and perhaps peruse the shop before you go, hmn? You might find an automaton to amuse you—because you must be ever so bored if you are intruding in police business. Bonjour.”

  * * *

  Ophelia started down the gloomy corridor towards the front of Colifichet’s shop, but Penrose touched her arm and beckoned her in the other direction. A door at the end led out to a tight rear courtyard. Moss clotted the paving stones. Yellow walls rose five stories high, and clotheslines drooped from windows. Penrose studied the buildings.

  “Do you mind letting me in on the big secret?” Ophelia whispered. “I don’t even know what Mr. Colifichet said back there.”

  “I shall tell you in a moment. But first—I’ll be returning later. I must learn of all possible points of entry. This place is a bit like a fortress, unfortunately—although there does seem to be a gate at the back.”

  Ophelia squinted up at the windows and clotheslines. “Oh, we’ll find our way in.”

  “We.”

  “Goodness, Professor, surely you aren’t so elderly you require an ear horn.” Ophelia bustled back inside.

  * * *

  Madame Fayette’s residence was next. During the carriage ride, Penrose told Ophelia what Colifichet had said.

  Ophelia, holding the turtle on her lap, said, “If Monsieur Colifichet has the stomacher, as Pierre claimed, then he must have killed Mr. Grant last night. But what does it have to do with Prue?”

  “I do not know.”

  “How will we ever find her?”

  Penrose didn’t answer at once, and Ophelia didn’t fancy his grim face one bit. Finally, he said, “It seems to me that we must continue to pursue the stomacher. If we do indeed find it in Colifichet’s workshop tonight, we must bring it to the police, along with a report of the lawyer Cherrien’s demands.”

  “You’d give up a fairy tale relic like that?”

  “Prue is far more important. Meanwhile, it is still necessary to speak with Madame Fayette. If she is Cherrien’s client, then she desires the stomacher.”

  “I don’t care about the stomacher! All I care about is Prue.”

  “We will find Prue. I give you my word.”

  “You cannot give me your word.”

  “The stomacher will lead us to her. And as I believe you well know, Miss Flax, there is much to be said for steely determination.”

  Ophelia stared out the carriage window as they bumped along. Never had the Paris streets seemed so alien. “I feel as though everything is slipping through my fingers like sand. Henrietta gone. Now Prue.” Ophelia couldn’t say it aloud, but she wondered how she’d ever live with herself if she never saw Prue again.

  * * *

  This time, Madame Fayette’s maid told them that her mistress was awake and expecting them.

  Madame Fayette’s entry foyer was a little, airy space done up in shades of lemon and periwinkle. The maid led Ophelia and Penrose down a narrow, lofty corridor scented with dried lavender and into a light-filled parlor. Oil paintings, framed sketches, and watercolors filled the walls, and side tables and shelves displayed busts and baubles. Yellow roses overflowed from crystal vases. An ornate brass birdcage stood on a stand. Inside, a canary hopped.

  “Good morning,” Madame Fayette said. She wore a gown of green silk with more ruffles than a flustered goose. She poured coffee from a graceful silver pot, and her diamond bracelet sparkled. “Lord Harrington and—?”

  “Mrs. Brand, my American aunt.”

  “Ah, indeed?”

  Ophelia watched Madame Fayette closely. If she knew that Miss Stonewall and Mrs. Brand were frauds, and if she was the one who’d enlisted the lawyer to put the screws on Penrose, she didn’t show it. Maybe she hadn’t sent that boxed gown addressed to Madame Brand, after all. But if she hadn’t, who had? Funny, too, that Josie had said Madame Fayette was suffering from fatigue, because she appeared rosy and well-rested.

  “Pleas
e, do sit,” Madame Fayette said. “I was most surprised when my maid told me that you called at such an early hour but I must admit, my curiosity is piqued. Coffee?”

  “Thank you,” Penrose said.

  Ophelia nodded. She’d made up her mind to let the professor do the talking. All of the talking. No point in giving her disguise away.

  They sat. Madame Fayette passed cups of coffee and gestured to the cream and sugar. “Does this concern Miss Stonewall’s garments, Lord Harrington? Josie has not been herself as of late—she is the seamstress who finished those gowns—so I do apologize if the garments were not sewn to your young cousin’s taste.”

  That was rich. Madame Fayette lolling about in splendor while poor Josie worked her fingers to the bone?

  “It is to do with murder,” Penrose said. He was staring at a watercolor painting on the wall. “And a young lady called Prudence Bright who was taken against her will from Hôtel Malbert this morning.”

  “Taken?” Madame Fayette touched her throat. Her diamond bracelet slid towards her elbow. “Who is the girl, precisely?”

  Penrose began to describe Prue’s disappearance.

  Ophelia stopped breathing. Mercy. That bracelet, with its braided design and thick crust of diamonds, had seemed familiar before, when Madame Fayette had taken her measurements at Maison Fayette. And now Ophelia knew why: the last time she’d seen that bracelet it had been on Henrietta’s wrist, back in New York. It had been a gift from one of her gentleman suitors.

  “Excuse me, madame,” Ophelia said, interrupting Penrose’s ramblings. “I can’t help admiring your bracelet.”

  They all looked at the bracelet.

  “Where did you get it?” Ophelia asked.

  Madame Fayette laughed, but her eyes were hard. “You Americans and your simply charming informal—”

  “That bracelet belonged to the Marquise Henrietta. You do know her, and she was one of your customers. Why did you lie about it when I asked you?”

  “I never said that I did not know the marquise. I merely refrained from engaging in gossip. Either way, this is not her bracelet—what a fantastical suggestion! It is mine. I have owned it for years. And, do you not mean to say, Madame Brand, why did I lie to Mademoiselle Stonewall?”