by Maia Chance
The specter said nothing. Somewhere in the ballroom, a lady wept.
“I did not kill you!” the prince roared. “You cannot torment me so! You saw that it was that little wretch, Josie!”
Josie? Ophelia blinked. There was another fair-haired young woman, this one more willowy, in yet another ivory tulle gown. She glided through the dim ballroom. The crowd parted so she could pass. She ascended the dais, exuding a riveting power that belied her slight frame. The diamond stomacher on her bodice sparkled in the gloom.
A gunshot cracked out. Screams. A thud. Ophelia smelled gunpowder.
The chandeliers flared back up. Prince Rupprecht lay in a lifeless heap on the dais. Austorga wept over him.
Josie rushed out to the terrace, clutching a pistol, and the stunned crowd let her pass.
“I’m not going to let her get away after all of this,” Ophelia muttered, hitching her skirts. She pushed through the staring guests. By the time she reached the terrace, Josie was heading down the steps into the formal gardens. Ophelia dashed after her, dimly aware that others were following.
She grabbed Josie’s arm at the bottom of the steps.
Josie squealed and fumbled with the pistol. “I will shoot!” She aimed at Ophelia’s face.
“No, you won’t,” Ophelia said. “You’re done with murder, aren’t you, Josie?”
“I thought I was finished already, but you! Whoever you are—”
“Miss Flax will do.”
“You and your silly disguises, all your questions and prying and stirring of the hornet’s nest! You could not let things be.”
“An innocent derelict is in jail. Give me the gun.” Ophelia held out her hand.
Josie hung on to the pistol, but her hands trembled.
Ophelia carefully plucked the gun from Josie’s grasp, and Josie sagged in relief or defeat.
A few gentlemen guests arrived at the bottom of the steps. Ophelia held up a hand. “Please. Allow me to ask her a few questions. She cannot flee now. And, please, someone go and try to discover if Inspector Foucher of the Paris police has arrived yet.” She turned to Josie, who had sunk to her knees on the gravel path. Her ivory skirts pooled around her. Her delicate head hung, and the diamonds on her stomacher glittered. “Josie, why? Why did you shoot Prince Rupprecht?”
“Why?” Josie jerked her head up. “Because he did not deserve to live! Because I have nowhere left to run, nothing left for me. I killed two people and would soon be caught—because of you. You!—by the police. I would not go to prison without destroying the prince, first.”
“But did you know him?”
“Oui. Knew, yes, knew. I first encountered him at Maison Fayette four months ago, when he came to order a special gown to be made for one of his lady friends. He brought the stomacher. He wished to have a special gown made to incorporate it. The next day, Monsieur Grant came to the shop. I had never met him before, but when Madame Fayette could not hear, he offered me money. Money simply to dine with the prince. I thought of poor Maman and her fading eyes . . . I said yes. We dined, and the prince was so kind. He gave me flowers, and no one has ever done that. We dined again, and then he—his hands—” Josie’s voice cracked.
“I think I understand,” Ophelia said softly. Josie was a murderess, so was it right to pity her? “Did you sew the Cinderella ballet costume?”
“Oui, and another one very like it, but to my own measurements.” Josie touched her gauzy skirts. “This. For him. To please him. He called me Cendrillon. But soon he grew tired of me, told me I was imperfect, cast me aside. My ears. My ears are too big, he said. But when the time came for Prince Rupprecht to order another Cinderella gown for his next girl, I had to sew it.”
How humiliating.
“I decided to have my revenge. I stole Madame Fayette’s revolver and went to the prince’s mansion. I found him in that sickening chamber with his newest Cendrillon and, oh mon Dieu, I meant to kill him then, but I saw her in his arms, in the gown I had sewn, in the diamond stomacher he had given to me, and I . . .”
“Did you shoot Sybille?” Ophelia asked.
“I did not mean to, but when it happened I felt like a rotten tooth had been pulled out. The prince saw everything. I threatened to go to the police and say he killed Sybille, and he grew mad with alarm. He agreed to help me get rid of the body. I had overheard during a fitting at Maison Fayette that Sybille was Henrietta’s daughter, so together, the prince and I placed Sybille’s body in the garden of Hôtel Malbert to draw suspicion to the Malbert family.”
Ophelia’s pity for Josie faded. “You took the stomacher from Sybille’s body?”
“Oui. The prince, he had forgotten it in his haste and worry.”
“That was you I saw that night, riding back and forth in the carriage in front of Hôtel Malbert.”
“I watched from a hired carriage to see when the police arrived. I wanted to be certain that the body was found.” Josie’s voice lilted with what sounded like . . . pride.
Well, murdering Sybille was probably the boldest thing she had ever done, and probably the first time in her life that she had stood up for herself. “Then you told your brother, Pierre, what you had done.”
“After the police arrived, I asked the driver to take me to Colifichet’s workshop. Pierre was working late. He devised the plan to blame a madman of the streets for the crime. Pierre went to the police and gave them his story about a madman fleeing the scene of the crime. The police seemed to know of a man who fit that description, and Pierre listened carefully as they spoke of him.”
Foucher. The Insensible Man, indeed.
“After I shot Monsieur Grant,” Josie said, “Pierre caught the madman, with blood on his hands, fleeing the opera house.”
“But how?”
“Pierre had listened carefully to the police description of the madman they suspected. Pierre agreed that I should kill Monsieur Grant, and Pierre found the madman, gave him money, brought him to the opera house, spilled pig’s blood on his hands. Then Pierre ‘caught’ him.”
“That man is innocent!”
Josie lifted a shoulder. “He had to be sacrificed. Pierre and I would have been safe, we could have sold this stomacher and gone away, to America, perhaps. We might have begun a new life where there are no cruel masters, no princes. But you could not leave things alone, could you?”
“You put me off the scent time and again, Josie. To think I felt pity for you! You set me up to see Grant taking the parcel from Maison Fayette, didn’t you?”
“You were so forthcoming,” Josie said. “Stupid. And it was not even the stomacher in that parcel. It was a scrap of cloth.”
“Grant never had the stomacher?”
“Never!” Josie’s fingers spread across the stomacher.
“What about that note, threatening to kill for it?”
“I meant for Monsieur Grant to suppose that he might receive the stomacher by meeting me that night.”
The wording of the note had been ambiguous. Ophelia realized she must have misinterpreted it. “Why did Grant desire the stomacher?”
“He had seen it before. He understood its value.”
“But in the end, he was merely a pawn in your game, Josie. Why did you kill him?”
“For revenge. He procured me like a—a whore for Prince Rupprecht. He was responsible for my degradation.”
“Why did you kill him at the opera house?”
“Pierre said we should have many witnesses when he caught the madman.”
“And why on that particular night?”
“Because of you.”
Oh, no.
“Once I became aware of your investigation—”
“How?”
“I could easily tell that Mrs. Brand and Miss Stonewall were one and the same. I saw you in both disguises. Once I learned that you were prying,
I knew that Monsieur Grant must die. If I did not kill him, you see, you would sooner or later discover that he introduced me to the prince. I would become an obvious suspect.”
Ophelia’s belly sank. “Once you knew I was prying, you pointed fingers at Grant, Malbert, Madame Fayette—by delivering Miss Stonewall’s gown to Hôtel Malbert. Pierre placed Professor Penrose and me in that trap in Colifichet’s workshop in an attempt to have us arrested.”
“Yes. And you, foolish lady, went off in the direction of each of my tricks like a cat after a clockwork mouse.”
“I may have gone round and round a little, but each time I was getting a bit closer to the truth. Would you have come here tonight if it weren’t for the professor and me?”
Josie’s eyes shone with pure loathing. She puckered her mouth as though about to spit, but two gendarmes trotted down the steps, heaved Josie to standing, and hauled her away.
* * *
“That was by far your best performance,” Ophelia said to Prue.
“Think so?” Prue forked a huge bite of cake into her mouth. “Never played a ghost before. That was the best scheme you’ve ever cooked up, Ophelia Flax. Where’s Ma? Are you sure she’s here?”
“I spoke to her.”
“Probably met a new feller tonight.” Prue’s voice was careless, but her eyes were damp with hurt as they darted around the ballroom, searching.
Ophelia longed to tell Prue that her mother wasn’t worth all that sadness, but how could she? After all was said and done, you only got one mother.
Prue wore the Cinderella costume that Ophelia had doctored with greasepaint and scissors to have a bullet hole and blood, but she didn’t seem to mind. Neither did Dalziel, who had taken it upon himself as his sole mission in life to gaze at Prue while feeding her sweets.
“This cake is scrumptious, Dalziel,” Prue said. “Hey, I never realized your grandparents only wanted me to get to the ball on time.”
“They wished you no harm. They only hold some rather peculiar beliefs about fairy tales—a sort of typology of fairy tales, if you will.”
Prue chewed and blinked.
“They believe that the tales in those stories happen once every generation.”
“But why were they acting so pushy about it? What’s it to them?”
“It is shocking to say it, but to Grandmother and Grandfather, fairy tales are almost a religion. Making certain you arrived at the ball on time tonight was tantamount to acting as high priest and priestess at a sacred rite.”
“Nuts,” Prue muttered.
Dalziel looked hurt.
“I mean to say, I sure wish this cake had nuts in it.”
“Oh,” Dalziel said. “Shall I fetch you some cake with nuts?”
“Sure.”
Dalziel hurried away.
“Are the police still questioning Josie?” Prue asked Ophelia
“I’m not certain.” Ophelia looked around the ballroom. The crowd had thinned out and the orchestra had gone. A few determined merrymakers drank and ate, but when the host had been murdered it put a damper on things.
“Here comes Professor Penrose,” Prue said.
Ophelia’s belly sank. She hid her hand, with its cargo of ruby ring, behind her back. Thank goodness Griffe had gone off somewhere.
Penrose’s face was taut. “Inspector Foucher has finished questioning Pierre and Josie—for now, at least. Pierre is silent and sullen, but all the strength seemed to have quite gone out of Josie once the stomacher was confiscated.”
Penrose had gotten to listen in on the prisoners’ questionings, since Inspector Foucher credited him with the trap. Never mind that it had actually been Ophelia’s trap.
“Sugarplum!” someone said. Henrietta.
Prue shoved her cake plate and fork into Ophelia’s hands, threw herself upon her mother, and started bawling.
Ophelia and Penrose inched away.
“Henrietta seems overjoyed,” Penrose said.
“Don’t forget she’s an actress. She’s about as maternal as a garter snake.”
Penrose told Ophelia what he had learned in the police interrogation of Josie and Pierre. “Prince Rupprecht is—or, I should say, was—utterly fascinated by the story of Cinderella and more specifically, the character of Cinderella, who he took to represent the very pinnacle of female perfection. A beautiful girl ostensibly doomed to poverty and work, but lifted up by the love of a prince.”
Not too loving, if you asked Ophelia.
“After Josie killed Grant, things began to come undone for her and her brother. They became desperate, and that is when Pierre began with his attempts to do you in. That was Pierre pedaling about on the velocipede and attempting to shoot us. It was he who pushed you at the exhibition hall, too—he knew you would be there because he’d followed you after delivering a parcel to Hôtel Malbert. And you do realize now, after seeing Pierre’s trick this evening, what was in that parcel?”
“Pickled automaton’s feet?”
“Yes. That little ruse killed two birds with one stone: it drew your attention away from Josie and once again towards Malbert, of whom you’d confessed to being suspicious to Josie, and it also gave Pierre a neat way to dispose of the feet he’d removed from the Cinderella automaton, to be replaced with larger feet.”
“My sainted aunt.”
“Indeed. The episode on the lake earlier this evening was their last-ditch attempt to stop us. After all of this, I daresay that we are fortunate to be alive.”
“What about the lawyer, Cherrien? Why did Prince Rupprecht enlist him to locate the stomacher? Didn’t Prince Rupprecht know that Josie had it?”
“Josie told the prince that she didn’t know what had happened to the stomacher after they left Sybille in the garden. He assumed, it seems, that someone in the Malbert household, or one of the other guests, stole it.”
“And where is the stomacher now?”
“Foucher confiscated it. It will be returned to the marquis.” Penrose paused. He adjusted his spectacles. “Miss Flax, would you come out onto the terrace with me? I have something else, of a rather different nature, that I would like to say to you.”
33
Ophelia and Professor Penrose walked outside in silence, stopping at the marble balustrade overlooking the dark gardens and park.
“Miss Flax, you did not allow me to finish earlier,” Penrose said, “and I insist that you hear me out before I—before I go. My students, my studies, await me in Oxford.”
“I’ve heard quite enough of the charming Miss Banks, if you don’t mind awfully. So you just go on back to your ivory tower and—”
“That’s just it. Miss Banks is not charming. She is, in point of fact, somewhat horrid.”
Ophelia frowned. “That’s not very charitable, Professor.” A wisp of hope arose.
“I oughtn’t have spoken of her at all. She is really—well, it does not matter what I think of her. She will have her pick of suitors.”
“Plucks them from the orchard, does she?”
“Miss Flax, I may not have been entirely accurate when I said that Miss Banks and I have an understanding.”
“What?”
“I have never asked her to marry me.”
“You scalawag! I’ve been tied up in knots on account of that I—that we . . .”
“I am very sorry. Please. There is something I must tell you.”
Ophelia couldn’t meet his gaze. She simply waited for him to continue.
“I cannot say why, or how, this happened,” Penrose said. “How this has occurred. The revolution that has taken place in my mind—or, really, it is not my mind, for I find that the greater part of my mind rebels against the very idea of you. No, the change has occurred in my soul.” He paused. “In my heart.”
She felt his gaze upon her cheek. She couldn’t move. She stared
out into the star-studded horizon.
He continued. “I never could comprehend what people were going on about, speaking of their hearts in circumstances of sentiment. But I comprehend it fully, now. When I see you, Miss Flax—God, even in one of your preposterous disguises, that is how far this has gone—my very heart gives a wrench. When I attempt to sleep at night, haunted by fragments of your voice, the gestures of your hands, the singular gleam of your lovely dark eyes—my heart goes out of me, trying, I suppose, to find you. To bring you close. And when I try to think how I will live without you when I return home to England, well then, it is my heart that aches.”
Ophelia noted, with great sensitivity, the way a breeze fluttered a tendril of hair across her forehead. Still more acutely, she felt the ruby ring on her hand. Cold. Heavy.
“I love you, Miss Flax. That is what I wished to tell you earlier, bumbling like a fool. It is really quite simple. But I see that you have nothing to say. That you cannot look at me—well, I daresay that speaks volumes, does it not? So. Good evening.”
“Wait!” Her lungs were tight. “Wait.”
He stood over her, looking, for the first time in her memory, vulnerable.
Why, oh why, did it have to unfold, to unravel, like this?
She brought out her ruby-ringed hand, stretching her fingers along the balustrade. “I might have made a mistake. But I must behave honorably.”
Penrose stared down at the bloodred glitter in disbelief. “Griffe.” His voice was ragged. “You will be a countess.” He made a stiff bow. “I wish you and the count all the best.”
Ophelia watched Penrose stalk away down the long, long terrace, pulling fragile threads of her behind him. His tall shape melded into the black night, leaving her alone, shivering, with her icebox of a heart.
* * *
In the blue light of dawn, Ophelia dressed in her fine, forest green visiting gown, which stank of lake water and was only half dry. She drew on her black velvet paletot, laced up her battered brown boots, and carried the turtle out into Château de Roche’s park. She found a path that wound through misty woods and fields towards the river.