by Maia Chance
“I cannot recall.”
“I paid some attention, yes. If a man sinks that much money into something, he must see it through, yes?”
“The detail of that ballet! Colifichet’s scenery is simply stupendous, and the costumes.” Penrose paused. “How is it that the ballerina’s costume has a stomacher that resembles to a startling degree an heirloom stomacher belonging to the Malbert family?”
“Does it?” Prince Rupprecht had drawn a small object—a coin—from his pocket, and he tossed it into the air and caught it, over and over. “I did not design the costumes, Lord Harrington.” He chuckled, his eyes strained. “I wished for the costume to be particularly beautiful, of course, so I commissioned Madame Fayette—have you heard of her?—to design and make it. No cheap theatrical rags, yes?”
That explained why the ballet costume was so unnecessarily fine, then.
Up went the coin, and Prince Rupprecht caught it. And again, and again.
Ophelia glanced at Penrose. He made a slight shake of his head: no. She ignored it.
“Prince Rupprecht, whatever are you throwing that coin about for?” Ophelia asked.
He caught the coin and tucked it in his pocket. “My nursemaid told me, when I was a boy, that you must keep a coin in your pocket to appease the ghosts you meet.”
“Ghosts! Have you ghosts in your house?” Ophelia asked.
“One never knows.” Prince Rupprecht snatched his empty glass from the floor and lumbered—unsteadily now—back to the drinks table.
“I ask about the stomacher,” Penrose said, “because in my academic work I happened to have come across an old version of the tale that assigns the stomacher to Cinderella’s ball gown. Not the younger stepsister’s.”
Prince Rupprecht brought his sloshing-full brandy glass back to his throne and thumped to a seat. “That is but a silly bit of lore, is it not? I heard it from the mouths of the mademoiselles Malbert. They claim kinship with Cinderella and claim their house was the setting of the tale. Rubbish.”
“Rather,” Penrose said.
Ophelia frowned. Prince Rupprecht had been so attentive to the stepsisters at the exhibition, but now he seemed contemptuous of them. As she thought this over, her gaze floated around the chamber. Another chamber opened out behind the prince, beyond a pair of satin curtains held open with golden cords. She saw a statue of a fryer-hipped Venus, an enormous Turkish divan bursting with pillows, and an oil painting of frolicking nymphs—in their birthday suits—over the fireplace.
Prince Rupprecht caught her staring. He stood and, rambling to the professor about ballet costumes and scenery designs, went to the curtains and shut them.
“Well, we won’t keep you any longer, Prince Rupprecht.” Penrose stood, and Ophelia did, too. But she kept trying to see through the crack the prince had left in those curtains. “I do hope your ball is a success.”
“You must come, Lord Harrington. There will be far too many ladies, and I cannot dance with them all.”
“Perhaps I shall. I have heard rumors of an important announcement. You won’t tell me who the fortunate lady is, will you?”
Prince Rupprecht smiled, and tapped the side of his red nose. “It is to be a grand surprise.”
* * *
“He was hiding something in that alcove,” Ophelia whispered as she and Penrose swung through the prince’s front gate. “I’m sure of it.”
“He merely wished to hide all of those”—Penrose cleared his throat—“all of his artworks, Miss Flax. He wished to protect your ladylike sensibilities.”
“No. I can’t believe it.” Prince Rupprecht, of all the gentlemen Ophelia had ever met, was one of the least likely to give a fig about a lady’s feelings.
“What is next?” Penrose asked. They paused beside their carriage, waiting at the curb.
Ophelia pressed her lips together. Amid all that hullabaloo with Malbert and the meat cleaver, she hadn’t exactly planned things out.
“You cannot return to Hôtel Malbert,” Penrose said.
“Not if I want to keep my feet on.”
“Stay at my hotel.”
All the air gusted out of Ophelia’s lungs. “Oh. I—”
“In your own suite, of course.” Penrose glanced past her, looking flustered. “I am thoroughly aware that you have your pride, Miss Flax, and are perhaps about to condemn my offer of assistance as a handout, but at this juncture you really haven’t anywhere else to go.”
“I’ve got money.” Ophelia jutted out her chin. The plain truth was . . . if she spent even five more francs, she could bid her steamship passage to America good-bye. Then what would she do? Become a cancan dancer?
“You worked a great deal for that money, as a maid, for pity’s sake,” Penrose said. “I shan’t allow you to spend it all. You need it.”
This was too, too humiliating. When Ophelia was traipsing around with the professor, spying and quizzing people, well, she felt they were just about equal. But once money got into the mix, it poisoned things. He was an earl. She was an unemployed actress who was probably wanted by the Paris police by now.
“Miss Flax. Please. We’ll go to my hotel and have luncheon—surely you are famished by—”
“Mercy,” Ophelia hissed. “Professor! Look!” She pointed over Penrose’s shoulder. He swung around.
The masked velocipede rider pedaled behind a delivery wagon. The rider turned his—or her—head. The eyeholes in the highwayman’s mask were shadowed by the brim of the bowler hat. The rider reached inside the flapping jacket, pulled out a revolver, aimed at Ophelia—
Penrose pushed Ophelia behind their carriage just as a shot cracked out.
“Are you all right?” he whispered, pressed against her.
“Think so.”
Penrose pulled something from inside his jacket. A revolver.
Their driver yelled at Penrose in French. Penrose signaled the driver to crouch down. He cocked his revolver. Slowly, he peered around the carriage, revolver poised. He watched for several seconds, breathing hard.
He turned to Ophelia. “He’s gone. Let us go, before Prince Rupprecht emerges and asks questions.” He said something to the driver, and the driver shook his head and waved his hands.
“He refuses to follow the cyclist,” Penrose told Ophelia.
“We could follow on foot.”
“He’s had too much of a start. Besides which, I won’t expose you like that, Miss Flax. That cyclist is mad.”
* * *
“That settles it,” Ophelia said, once the carriage was moving. “Someone’s trying to pop me off. That’s the third time! First at the exhibition hall, then two times with that creepy velocipede rider.”
Penrose nodded, his mouth grim.
“The only people possessing the slight build of the cyclist who were at the exhibition hall were Miss Smythe and Miss Eglantine,” Ophelia said.
“Are you really able to picture either of those young ladies on the loose in the city, dressed as a gentleman, shooting a pistol?”
“If she were desperate enough, sure.”
“Why would someone choose to follow us, shoot at us, from a velocipede rather than a closed carriage? They risk being identified, and it is wildly inefficient.”
“Not everyone is able to afford a carriage.”
“You suggest that the cyclist is short of funds?”
“Perhaps. Young ladies like Miss Smythe and Miss Eglantine, while their wants are taken care of by their parents, do not always have money of their own to spend.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Or it might be someone who is really and truly penniless.”
“That does not match the description of, say, Madame Fayette, or Monsieur Malbert, or Monsieur Colifichet—all persons who I wouldn’t blink an eye if you told me they wanted to harm us, but all who h
ave sufficient funds to hire not only an assassin, but a carriage for their assassin.”
They made a detour to the Le Marais commissaire’s office. This time, Ophelia stayed behind in the carriage with the turtle. After her confrontation with Malbert, Inspector Foucher was the last person she wished to see, but the professor hoped to take a stab at speaking with the madman who’d been arrested last night.
Penrose slammed himself back into the carriage in fewer than five minutes.
“Did Inspector Foucher tell you to hit the trail?” Ophelia asked.
“After a fashion, yes.”
* * *
Hôtel Meurice, Professor Penrose’s hotel, stood across from the Tuileries Gardens. Penrose booked Ophelia into a suite of rooms while she dawdled at his elbow, feeling mortified but at least reassured that, in her Mrs. Brand disguise, no one would take her for a disreputable lady. She held her reticule sideways in both hands because the turtle was inside, on top of the Baedeker.
They planned to meet at nine o’clock in the evening to go to Colifichet’s shop. Penrose left her at her door.
The suite’s windows overlooked a busy thoroughfare. Across the street sprawled the Tuileries Gardens: bare rattling branches, puddly walks, statues of wild beasts, and a large fountain in the distance.
The suite was staggeringly grand and Ophelia was afraid to sit down lest her mud-stained skirts soil the rich brocade. The four-poster bed was huge and downy-looking. Delicious heat, all for her, radiated from a coal fire. The lavatory taps would pump endless hot water, and a brand-new bar of lemon blossom soap, still wrapped, sat in a crystal dish.
She’d never experienced such luxury. It gave her the jitters.
But she took a hot bath and scrubbed away the face paint. Pity she couldn’t scrub away the guilt. Guilt at having this, enjoying this, while Prue was missing. Not to mention the green-at-the-gills fact that Professor Penrose was footing the bill.
After she dried off, she filled the bathtub again with cool water and let the turtle have a swim. While he did so, Ophelia inspected her run-over toe. Still swollen, purple, and shiny. She might’ve broken it. She dug through her theatrical case and rubbed some of her calendula flower salve on her foot. She really could’ve used a cup of the birch bark tea her mother used to boil, but this was Paris, not the New Hampshire hills.
Presently, a waiter rolled in a trolley piled with enough food for ten people: roast chicken, buttery potatoes and yellow beans, bread, more butter (this was, after all, France), fish and greens and salads and gelatin molds and chocolate cake, strawberries, and iced cream. She placed the turtle on the carpet next to the table and offered him greens and strawberries. He liked both.
Clean, warm—a little too warm—and stuffed like a Christmas goose, Ophelia curled up on the bed. She was practically in a stupor, she was so exhausted from the last few days. She’d just have a little shut-eye . . .
When she woke, night had fallen. The trolley and all the dishes and silver domes were gone. The turtle sat in the corner, and it was past nine o’clock.
Ophelia tied on her boots, pulled on her black bombazine gown, black bonnet, and cloak, but did not bother with the Mrs. Brand face. She went downstairs.
26
“I believed you had a plan,” Ophelia whispered to Professor Penrose. They huddled over the handle of the door in the rear courtyard of Colifichet & Fils. The door was locked. A fine mist twirled through the dark air, and Ophelia’s heart thudded.
“Have faith, my dear.” Penrose pulled a pointed bit of iron from his inner jacket pocket and fitted it into the lock.
“Professor!”
“You’ve seen me pick a lock before, Miss Flax. Have you forgotten?”
“I reckon I blotted it out.”
“Mm.”
The lock caught and tumbled. But when Penrose pushed, the door did not give.
“It’s bolted from the inside.” Penrose scanned the windows at first-story height.
So did Ophelia. They were all barred.
“We’ll find another entrance,” Penrose said. He slipped his lock-picking tool in his pocket and started across the courtyard.
“Hold your hat on. Look. That window above this door is ajar—and it hasn’t got bars.”
Penrose looked up at the window, then threw a glance down at Ophelia. “You do realize that that window is at least twelve feet above us.”
“Sure. But that one isn’t.” She pointed to another window, on the opposite side of the courtyard.
“Miss Flax.” Penrose sounded impatient. “That window is not ajar and, furthermore, as it is on the other side of the courtyard, there could be any number of locked doors inside the building that would impede our progress to the workshop. No, we must—”
“Oh, just button it and listen.”
Penrose lifted an eyebrow.
He’d probably never been told to button it in his life.
“Here is what I’m thinking,” Ophelia said. She pointed to the window across the courtyard. “You could help me get up onto that windowsill. Then I might cross over this clothesline there”—she traced its sagging length with a pointed finger—“that leads straight to the open window. I’ll climb through the window, go downstairs, and unbolt the door from inside.”
Penrose stared at her. “You’ll walk on the clothesline?”
“It’s a circus trick. Tightrope. Heard of it?”
“Yes. But this clothesline is anything but tight.”
“But I’ll have that other clothesline to hold on to—see?”
“And if it were to collapse? Those two clotheslines, in addition to being flimsy and possibly decayed, are weighted down with what appears to be three weeks’ worth of some rather large infant’s nappies.”
“I guess you’ll have to catch me, Professor.” Ophelia hurried across the courtyard.
Penrose grumbled something, but he followed her. He hoisted her up by having her step into his hooked-together hands. After a few tries—with crashing and flailing—Ophelia got her boot-toe wedged onto the windowsill. With a last heave, she had both feet on the sill, and then—with a mighty stretch—both of her hands were wrapped tight around the upper clothesline.
“Steady now,” Penrose whispered.
Ophelia bit her lower lip, and with great care stepped her left foot onto the lower clothesline. The line sagged under her weight and swung from side to side.
“I have never attended a circus, I allow,” Penrose said below her, “but I gather that tightropes do not typically swing like hammocks.”
“Do you wish for me to attempt this, or not?”
“I suppose it is worth—”
“Then shush. I must concentrate.” Ophelia brought her right foot up the clothesline, too. The upper clothesline hung at about rib-height. The lines wobbled, but she told her body to stay at once relaxed and springy, in the manner she’d always used while trick riding. The clotheslines went still.
Ophelia edged along, stepping carefully around wooden clothespins and flapping laundry. It would be a shame to mess up some poor lady’s work. Her crinoline swayed like a big bell and her injured little toe pulsed.
She reached the center of the courtyard, which was the droopiest, swingiest point of the clothesline. She lost her balance. Her feet, on the bottom clothesline, went one way. Her hands, clinging to the top clothesline, went the other. She squawked.
“Miss Flax!” Penrose exclaimed.
Her skirts sagged, pulling her. Her muscles strained.
“I’ll catch you.” Penrose opened his arms.
“I’m not going to fall.” With a great heave, Ophelia got herself vertical again. She inched forward. She breathed hard, and sweat trickled from her hairline. Her corset stuck like glue to her damp middle. However, she reached the window.
She went through headfirst, and her hands hit the floor
boards. Her ankles and feet stuck up into the air, and her skirts puffed around her hips. It was too dark for the professor to see anything, wasn’t it?
She collapsed on the floor, sat up, and looked around. Weak moonlight illuminated piles of crates. This was some sort of storeroom.
She gathered herself up and hurried to the door. Unlocked, thank goodness. She groped along a corridor, lit dimly from the storeroom window behind her, and found a flight of stairs leading downward. Once the stair hooked around a landing, the darkness was so thick she had to feel along the wall. At the bottom, she felt for the courtyard door.
The door seemed to be fastened with three sliding bolts and a latch. Bang-bang-bang-clack. She opened the door.
“Brilliant.” Penrose slid inside. They left the door open for light, and crept to the workshop door.
Penrose peered at the four brass locks on the workshop door. “These are moving combination locks, I’m afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“One cannot pick them.”
Cripes.
“These small dials—with letters, see?—twist about,” Penrose said. “You’ve got to line up the correct sequence of letters on the lock, and then it falls open.”
Ophelia peered closely. Tiny carved letters went around each of the dials. The top two locks had only three dials, but the third one had six, and the fourth had five. “But there are five or six letters on each dial. It looks impossible.”
“That is precisely the point. However, there are certain things to be observed about these locks.”
“Like what?”
“First, they appear to have been made—or at least, designed—by Colifichet himself. Do you see how finely they are wrought? In addition, he chose to make the dials with letters rather than numbers.”
“What’s the difference?”
“None, from a mechanical standpoint. Yet, from the standpoint of cryptography—code breaking—letters are, or I ought to say, might be, more easily broken than numbers, because letters suggest that the locks spell out words. My suspicion of the existence of words is further augmented by the irregular number of dials on the locks—three, three, six, and five.”