Cinderella Six Feet Under (23 page)

W
hen Ophelia and Penrose alighted from the carriage in the Latin Quarter, Ophelia indulged in a quick glance about the street. A peddler wheeled a handcart piled with onions. Ladies in kerchiefs chattered out second-story windows. A violinist screeched away on the corner, hat at his feet. Two students, already drunk—or still drunk—stumbled into an inn. Nothing seemed unusual.

It was silly to think a person might've followed them all this way through the city on a velocipede.

Madame Babin was at home. Her mahogany hair clung to her slack cheeks. A wrinkled, saffron silk dressing gown drooped to her ankles.
“Oui?”

“Madame Babin, we would be most obliged if we could have a brief word with you,” Penrose said in English.

Surely she understood English; she had been living with the American Caleb Grant.

A Siamese cat curved around the doorjamb. Clara scooped it up. “Who are you?” she asked in throaty English. Her eyes flicked to Ophelia. “Who is this old river barge?”

Ophelia drew herself up. “I am his aunt, Madame Brand.”

“His aunt? You might buy a nicer bonnet, then. You resemble a charwoman.”

“How rude! Did—”

“Madame Babin,” Penrose said quickly, “it is urgent that we speak with you regarding Monsieur Grant's death.”

“What does it matter? He is gone and the murderer was arrested. And why do you care one way or the other?” Clara stroked the cat. Hard.

Ophelia said, “We care because two ladies, the Marquise de la Roque-Fabliau and her daughter, are missing. We believe their disappearances are related to Monsieur Grant's demise.”

“Go away.” Clara, still holding the cat, nudged the door shut with her shoulder.

“Our questions also concern the Cinderella stomacher and a certain letter you could describe as a death threat,” Ophelia said.

The door stopped.

“We
had
supposed the wisest course was to go to the police with the matter,” Ophelia went on, “but I suspected that you would not especially enjoy being questioned.”

Clara's voice fell to a hiss. “How do you know about the letter?”

“You must have dropped it in the opera house lobby.”

“Bah!” Clara threw a hand up. “Very well, then, very well. What do I care?” She left the door open and stalked into the apartment. Her dressing gown wafted. The cat glared over Clara's shoulder at Ophelia.

“Well done,” Penrose murmured in Ophelia's ear, and Ophelia smiled in spite of herself.

They followed Clara into the sitting room. It was cluttered, as before, with the addition of half-filled wine bottles, goblets, brimming ashtrays, and tasseled pillows on the carpet. Acrid smoke drifted in the air.

“I could not sleep.” Clara crouched on a stool and picked up a cigarette that had been left burning in an ashtray. The cat leapt away. “I was waiting for him to come and shoot me, too. And I was thinking of Caleb, laid out on a slab at the morgue. To be sure, he
always
seemed to be laid out on a morgue slab, even in life.” She took a long inhale from her cigarette. The skin about her lips puckered. “But still.”

“You suppose the murderer is a
him
?” Ophelia asked.

“I
know
the murderer is a him, and he was arrested!”

“Come now, Madame Babin,” Penrose said. “You know as well as we do that the police have not arrested the true culprit.”

“The madman had blood on his hands!”

“He was probably paid to kill,” Ophelia said. “What raving lunatic would have the foresight to write that death threat and feign a lady's hand in the bargain?”

“We believe Monsieur Grant's death was somehow related to his little enterprise of procuring ballet girls for wealthy gentlemen,” Penrose said. “What might you be able to tell me about that?”

Clara squinted at Penrose through a stream of smoke. “Lord Harrytown, you said you are called?”

“Harrington.”

“Yes. A lord. You look just the sort who would pay for Caleb's services.”

Penrose's jaw tightened. “You confirm that there was indeed such an enterprise?”

“Does it come as a great shock? Those girls parade half unclothed onstage every night. None of them come from respectable backgrounds.”

Penrose shifted in his chair, and Ophelia knew he was thinking of how
she
was just such a young lady. She sat even straighter.

“The girls all desire—and need—the money,” Clara said. “And the men? Bah! To hell with all of them!”

“Did Madame Fayette blackmail Monsieur Grant?” Ophelia asked.

“Blackmail? No. Why would she?”

“Did Madame Fayette write the death threat?”

“We did not know who wrote it. Someone slipped it under the door here, yesterday afternoon. I told Caleb to leave it alone, but he insisted upon confronting whoever it was. If I had not been waylaid by an insane woman in the stage wings when I was scolding that careless Russian ballerina for staining her costume, he might still be alive.”

Ophelia fought the peculiar urge to cry. “Are you an employee of the opera house, then?”

“Yes. I look after the costumes. Why would Madame Fayette blackmail Caleb? We only knew her slightly. She left her position as costume mistress years before Caleb moved to Paris and took the position at the opera house.”

“He came from America?” Ophelia asked.

“Yes. Philadelphia. But the Americans are philistines who would not know real art if it smacked them in the face. So Caleb left.”

“Was Monsieur Grant Sybille Pinet's father?” Ophelia asked.

“Good heavens, no.”

“Speaking of art”—Penrose gestured to the wall behind Clara, the wall filled with watercolors of stage scenery designs—“I noticed a watercolor quite like these in Madame Fayette's home. I have reason to believe she received it in exchange for keeping quiet about something. Something to do, perhaps, with Caleb's enterprise and the stomacher. Did Caleb have the stomacher in his possession when he died?”

Clara sucked her cigarette and nodded.

“If he gave the murderer the stomacher, why was he shot?” Ophelia asked.

“How would I know?”

“Do you know what the stomacher means?”

“Of course I know.”

“Because of the ballet costume.”

“Stupid woman.
You
do not know.”

Ophelia lifted her brows. “Know what?”

“Who I am.”

“No, not exactly.”

“Not merely the mistress of Caleb!” Clara twitched her shoulders. “My God, everyone believes that! How much I gave up! And for what?”

Ophelia and Penrose exchanged a glance. Ophelia said, “I'm sorry, I don't quite follow.”

Clara tapped ash into a vase full of withered flowers. “I am the Marquise de la Roque-Fabliau.”

Ophelia's breath caught. “You are Miss Eglantine's mother? And Miss Austorga's?”

“What a
curious
old auntie you are. Did no one ever warn you that curiosity killed the cat? Yes. Babin is my maiden name.”

“And Malbert?”

“Their father. Odious little fungus.”

“And you are still married?”

“In the eyes of the church and the state.”

“What about Henrietta?”

“Puh! Henrietta! A grasping vixen, that one. She is quite, quite welcome to the putrid slug. Not for a single minute have I ever wished to have Malbert back. I left him many years ago, once our daughters were old enough to do without a mother. I was never very fond of those two, anyway. Ugly creatures. Eglantine is devious, too, and Austorga has a slow wit. She finds me at the opera house now and then, and attempts to engage me in mother-daughter repartee. Disgusting.”

Not exactly a mother hen, was she? But this explained what Austorga had been doing backstage that night.

“As the Marquise de la Roque-Fabliau,” Penrose said, “—and I suppose you are not lying about that?”

“Why would I lie? It makes me ill to admit it.”

“All right then. As the marquise, you must have been aware of your husband's family's rather unusual claim to share an ancestor with the lady called Cinderella.”

Ophelia tapped her toe. How did the professor always manage to steer the ship into the fairy tale channel?

“Isabeau d'Amboise,” Clara said. “Yes. I never heard the end of it. But they always left out the bit about being descended from the wicked stepmother, too.”

“Then you were also aware of the provenance of the diamond stomacher,” Penrose said.

Clara picked up a half-empty wineglass and sniffed it. “Yes.”

“Surely you noticed that the bodice of the ballet costume replicated the stomacher.”

“I did. But I thought nothing of it.” She polished off the wine.

“Why not?”

“Does it surprise you that I do not much care about that foolish tale and that dreary old stomacher? If you wish to know why the ballet costume replicated the stomacher, you must go and ask Prince Rupprecht. He commissioned the ballet, you know. Caleb told me that he took an inordinate interest in all of the scenery and costume design.”

Ophelia leaned forward. “Really? Prince Rupprecht?”

“Would you please leave, now?” Clara rose from her stool and stretched out on the sofa. “I am tired, and weary of this game. Go and play detective somewhere else.”

*   *   *

“Well, scratch the
notion of Henrietta wishing to divorce Malbert,” Ophelia said, once they were back in the hired carriage parked in the street. “Because a lady can't divorce a fellow she's never been married to.”

“Perhaps Henrietta had enlisted the lawyer for other reasons entirely.”

“You mean, maybe
Henrietta
is the lawyer's client?”

“She is connected to him somehow, judging by the half-burned envelope bearing his address in her grate.”

“But what would Henrietta want with that stomacher?”

“It is valuable.”

“But she's got no right to it, no legal right, since she's not really Malbert's wife. Besides, if Henrietta is the lawyer's client, that would make her the murderer, right? And I can't see it. Henrietta would double cross anyone, but she wouldn't
kill
anyone. Especially not her own daughter.”

“If Henrietta was not legally married to Malbert, the Misses Eglantine and Austorga, and Malbert himself, do not have credible motives for doing away with Henrietta. They were not bound to her in any way.”

“You mean to say, they could have simply kicked her out.”

“Yes. And now they are keeping it quiet.”

“Why?”

“Because it is shameful in more than one way. Bigamy. Cruelty. And then Henrietta's daughter found dead in their garden soon after.”

“I can't help thinking about those feet, Professor.” Ophelia bent to look at the turtle on the seat. He'd peeked out of his shell, and his curved snout and beady eyes were somehow comforting. “Where is Prue? We aren't getting any closer to finding her.”

“I believe we are. Prince Rupprecht commissioned the ballet. He may know why the ballet costume resembled Sybille Pinet's gown and why it incorporated a replica of the stomacher.”

“He might know all right, but there's something in the air. Everyone's lying like dogs on the floor
.
Do you know where the prince lives?”

“No. But I suspect that the Misses Malbert do.”

*   *   *

Hôtel Malbert was
quiet when Baldewyn let Ophelia in the front door. Penrose was waiting in the carriage since they had no way to explain his presence.

“
Madame
,” Baldewyn muttered as he stalked away.

“Are the
mademoiselles
at home?” Ophelia called after him.

“Non
,
madame.”

“What of Monsieur le Marquis?”

“I could not say,
madame
.” Baldewyn disappeared through the library door.

Ophelia thought fast. She had once seen Eglantine writing letters at a desk in the ladies' salon. Perhaps she kept an address book of some kind there. She hurried to the salon.

Empty. The remnants of a ladylike repast littered the coffee table. A mouse sat on its haunches beside a half-filled coffee cup, nibbling a pink macaron. Another mouse went at a chocolate bonbon. An obese cat dozed on a nearby chair.

Ophelia hurried to the dainty writing desk and opened it. Little compartments, lined in yellow silk, were stuffed with papers and envelopes, pens, and bottles of ink. Ophelia rifled through. Everything was in French, but she could read the names on the envelopes. In her haste, a few envelopes drifted to the carpet. She left them.
Wait!
Here was that addendum to the Prince's ball he'd sent a few days ago—it was the same large, square envelope, and yes, there was a Paris return address—

Someone behind her made a dry cough.