by Maia Chance
Austorga made a seal-like bark.
“He writes,” Eglantine said, “that his announcement will be of particular interest to the young ladies in attendance—”
Austorga muffled another bark in her palm.
“—but that is all.”
“The prince loves surprises,” Austorga said. “He adores them!” She bit into a chocolate bonbon, and cried out in pain.
“What is the matter?” Ophelia asked.
“It is my teeth.” Austorga kept chewing, but her eyes brimmed with tears. “They are terribly sore.”
“It is because of all that vinegar you have been drinking,” Eglantine said. “Everyone knows vinegar weakens one’s teeth.”
“But Mademoiselle Smythe said every English rose drinks vinegar to slim herself,” Austorga said.
Ophelia looked at Seraphina. Seraphina said nothing, and her expression was bland.
“I must be slim for the ball,” Austorga said, taking another bite of bonbon. “I must.”
“Oh, do shut up!” Eglantine flailed her thin arms for emphasis. One of the seamstresses, still stitching Eglantine’s hem, tumbled backwards. Eglantine muttered something waspish.
The seamstress crawled around the carpet, picking up pins. She was delicate, with a waxen complexion, lank blond hair, and blue half circles under her eyes.
“Is your seamstress well?” Ophelia asked Austorga. The seamstress glanced over. Had she heard? Could she understand?
“Josie is always a miserable little thing,” Austorga whispered. “Do not mind her. She is only one of Madame Fayette’s assistants.”
“Is the other seamstress over there Madame Fayette?”
“No, no, Madame Fayette is our dressmaker. Surely you know of her, for I have heard tell of American ladies traveling all the way to Paris to have their trousseaus made at Maison Fayette.”
“New England ladies always stitch their own trousseaus,” Ophelia lied.
“Well, Madame Fayette does not pay house calls. Only her seamstresses do.”
Mrs. Smythe looked up from her book. “Madame Fayette and her seamstresses are ever so busy, since every young lady of quality wishes to appear to the utmost advantage at the ball on Saturday. Or”—she threw her daughter another accusing glance—“almost every young lady.”
“Ah,” Ophelia said. Then, since everyone fancied she was a nosy old dame anyway, she said, “Why is it, I wonder, that the carriageway gate lock was changed this morning?”
“Was it?” Eglantine said in an airy tone.
“On account of the murder,” Austorga said.
“Oh?” Ophelia leaned closer. “How so?”
“Because the gate was left open that night, you see, and the murderer dragged that girl’s body in through the gate, and only after the police arrived did Beatrice notice that the carriageway gate key, which she always keeps on a little hook at the bottom of the kitchen stair, was missing.”
“Good heavens!” Ophelia said. “But the murderer is a derelict with no connection to the house. How did he obtain the key?”
“No one knows.”
“Beatrice must have lost the key,” Eglantine said. “She drinks like a fish when she plays cards with her friends behind the marketplace. Lulu told me so.”
“Is there only one key?” Ophelia asked.
“Two,” Austorga said. “The one kept in the kitchen, which Beatrice uses to open the gate for tradesmen’s deliveries, and the one kept by the coachman, Henri. But Henri said he still has his key.”
“Perhaps the murderer dragged the body through the gate behind the coachman,” Ophelia said.
“Surely Henri would have noticed something,” Eglantine said sharply.
“Yes, Henri would have noticed,” Seraphina said in a small voice.
“Seraphina!” Mrs. Smythe exclaimed. “Pray do not speak of the servants.”
Seraphina took a sullen bite of bonbon.
“I must insist that we discuss something more pleasant,” Eglantine said. “Mademoiselle Smythe—are you simply dying with envy over my ball gown?”
“Oh yes, quite. Dying,” Seraphina said, chewing. She nudged her enormous spectacles upwards.
* * *
“I traveled to Paris after reading an astonishing report in The Times of a murder in Le Marais,” Gabriel said to Lady Cruthlach after interminable and antiquated pleasantries. “I wished to meet you, to learn what you know of the matter and, perhaps, to propose another . . . exchange.”
“Oh yes, Lord Harrington,” Lady Cruthlach said, treacle-sweet. “Our last trade was most beneficial.”
For her, perhaps. The Tyrolean black wolf’s tooth they had given him, in exchange for a rare specimen of Siberian Amanita muscaria, had been a fraud.
“However, I know not of the astonishing newspaper report to which you refer,” Lady Cruthlach said.
“You did not notice the report of the girl found murdered in the garden of a house in Le Marais?”
“We do not worry ourselves with the rush and stew of the present day. You know as well as we do that the past is everything and all.”
Lady Cruthlach didn’t know about the house, then. Gabriel could continue to guard the secret. On the other hand, she might know something that he did not.
Gabriel drew the Charles Perrault volume from his jacket. He slid out the loose sheet, and unfolded it.
“Well?” Lady Cruthlach said. “What is this?”
Lord Cruthlach wheezed softly.
“My notes,” Gabriel said. “A transcription, rather, of an excised passage from Perrault’s ‘Cendrillon.’” There was actually more than one passage, but he would begin with this one.
“Excised passage?” Lady Cruthlach licked the corner of her mouth. “I knew not of such—such treasure. How did you come by this?”
“I stumbled upon it a few years ago, quite by chance, whilst researching ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ in a rare first-edition housed in the Sorbonne.”
“Well? Come now, don’t be a tease. Read it aloud. My eyesight is no longer good.”
“The excised passage was appended to the moral at the end of the tale. It denotes the address of the Cendrillon house—the house, that is, in which Cinderella dwelled with her father, stepmother, and stepsisters. The address was removed from subsequent editions of the volume, no doubt in order to protect the privacy of the Roque-Fabliau family.”
“Roque-Fabliau? Of Hôtel Malbert? You must be mistaken. That pitiful little marquis, up to his fat chins in debt? His two daughters were thrust upon me at a lecture on Pliny the Elder not long ago. Ugly, grasping creatures. Surely they cannot be descendants of Cinderella.”
“If the manuscript is to be believed, then they are not descendants of Cinderella, but descendants of Cinderella’s father and stepmother.”
Lord Cruthlach’s mouth opened and shut like a carp fish.
“What is it that you know?” Gabriel asked.
“Know?” Lady Cruthlach smoothed the blanket on her knees. “We know nothing, my dear.”
“Perhaps, then, it would be best if we forego any trades in the future.” Gabriel replaced the sheet of paper in the book and snapped it shut. He stood.
“No!” Lady Cruthlach cried. “Stay. I shall tell you. I shall tell you! You are the most diligent, the most resourceful and adventurous collector that we are acquainted with, Lord Harrington. I would so hate to see the last of you.”
Gabriel remained standing, and he tucked the book into his jacket.
“We have heard tell, for many years past, of a most extraordinary relic hidden in the Cendrillon house,” Lady Cruthlach said. “The queen mother of all other fairy tale relics.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“My lord Athdar is dying, Lord Harrington. Surely that is apparent. But there is something hidden in the Cendrill
on house that will change that. Something of such fantastical power that my lord will be restored. And he will live. Yes, he will live.”
“What is the nature of this relic?”
“We know not.” Lady Cruthlach’s eyes glittered. “Yet.”
Had Miss Flax been present, she would have doubtless remarked that Lady Cruthlach wasn’t a very fine actress.
Gabriel gave Lady Cruthlach his card with the name of his hotel written on the back. He left the mansion with the uneasy sense that he had somehow revealed too much.
8
Ophelia had never laid eyes on the Malberts’ coachman, who the girls had called Henri, because she had never ridden in their equipage. She did know that Eglantine and Austorga kept him busy day and night with their chock-full social calendars and that he must, then, be always at the ready.
She slipped away from the ladies in the salon, donned her cloak, and went out into the rear courtyard through a pair of doors in the library. The mansion formed two sides of the courtyard, and the ivy-covered carriage house and a high wall formed the other two sides. Beside the large, curved carriage doors was another, smaller door. Ophelia knocked on the small door.
Rustling and footfalls sounded within, and the door opened. A fine-looking young man stood before Ophelia. He was not very tall, but he had well-formed muscles, a proud bearing, and floppy brown curls. He wore shirtsleeves and a coachman’s shiny boots. “Madame Brand, bonjour,” he said in a calm, deep voice.
“Do you speak English?” Ophelia asked.
“Oui, yes, a little, please only.” His dark eyes twinkled. “Madame la Marquise, she keep all servants only who speak English.”
Ophelia fancied Henrietta had kept Henri on for reasons quite unrelated to his English-speaking abilities. And it was no wonder the three young ladies were so quick to spring to Henri’s defense. He would’ve caused a sensation on the dramatic stage.
“How did you know my name?” Ophelia asked.
“Baldewyn, he always tell me name of guest, oui? So that I might be, how you say, polite. Good servant.” His winning smile hid something sly.
“Well, I simply wished to ask you, Henri, about the carriageway key.”
“Ah, oui? It is kept locked always, madame, for we are in city very big.”
“No, no, I do not wish to go through the gate. I merely wished to ask if it had been left open, by you, on the night that, well”—Ophelia lowered her voice—“that the poor girl was dragged into the garden.”
“Non. I tell police. I never forget of locking gate. Never. That evening, aussi, I stay in. Here, in carriage house, parce que the mademoiselles entertain at home.”
“You were here.”
“Oui. And I have key in waistcoat pocket always.”
Ophelia glanced at his waistcoat. A button fastened the small pocket at the front. “Then did you notice anything? Hear anything?”
“Only when la jolie mademoiselle, the daughter of marquise, begin screaming. I was sleeping.”
“Oh, I see.” Ophelia peered past Henri into the dim carriage house. She saw straw on the floor, and smelled horse. His quarters would be upstairs.
“Is there a groom?” she asked.
“I do all the work. Horses, everything, and harnesses aussi.”
“And is there any way to reach the courtyard through the carriage house? From whatever street or alleyway lies behind, I mean.”
“Non. The carriage house was built without doors other than these.” He patted the doorjamb. “To keep family safe, oui? City very big all around.”
“Thank you, Henri.”
Ophelia went back inside. If Henri was telling the truth, then there was only the key that had gone missing from the kitchen to wonder about. Someone had stolen it. Either the murderer, or someone aiding the murderer.
* * *
Ophelia returned to her chamber, finished writing her note to Inspector Foucher, and took it downstairs to Baldewyn. She asked him to have a delivery boy take it to the commissaire’s office.
“Very well, madame,” Baldewyn said.
She gave him a few coins.
Baldewyn looked insulted, but kept the money.
Ophelia waited about an hour, and Baldewyn brought her Inspector Foucher’s reply. She read it in her chamber.
Madame Brand: Thank you for your message with regards to the identity of the murdered girl. Although your fortitude and resourcefulness are to be commended, your efforts are entirely misplaced, and I would be obliged if you would not continue to misuse the valuable time of the police. Mademoiselle Pinet’s identity has been duly noted but, as I informed you this morning, her identity is not relevant in this case, as the murderer has been identified. I will reveal to you, to put your evidently nervous mind at ease, that the murderer was spotted near the Pont Marie this morning, and we expect to apprehend him at any moment.
M. Foucher
Sybille’s identity wasn’t relevant? Ophelia crumpled the note and threw it into the fireplace. It caught fire on a smoldering coal and quickly turned to ash. Sybille’s identity would have been relevant had she a family, or position in society.
Ophelia felt a kinship with Sybille. Ophelia had no family, no position in society, either. Her mother was dead, her father had scarpered when she was only four, and her brother, Odie, well, she’d lost sight of him after he’d enlisted during The War Between the States. In her heart of hearts, she knew Odie was a goner, but that never stopped her from picturing him walking through a door one day with a big smile on his face.
Ophelia looked up Pont Marie in her Baedeker. Her stomach sank. It was a bridge a mere five or six blocks from Hôtel Malbert. If the police were after the right man, he was lurking close by.
* * *
Beatrice had shown up just long enough to slap together luncheon for the upstairs crowd, and then she ankled it out of the house again.
Prue got to work sprucing up the broom closet beneath the kitchen stairs. Maybe if everything was shipshape when Beatrice returned, she’d show Prue how to cook something Hansel might like.
When Prue darted outside the kitchen door to dump yet another dustpan full of mouse berries into the rubbish bin, she saw the man.
He was bulky. Uncommonly bulky, carrot-topped, and wearing drab, patched workman’s clothes, a woolen cap, and leather boots that fit snug around hamlike calves. Peculiar, too: it seemed, somehow, that Prue laying eyes on him startled him into motion. As though he’d been waiting for her to come out.
Prue dumped the dustpan and went back inside. Before she could slam the door, the man called out, “Wait.” In English. Not French.
Prue stayed by the door. She waited until the man arrived at the top of the kitchen steps.
The police had warned her to stay out of the sight of strangers. But surely it wouldn’t hurt to find out what the man wanted. Besides, he spoke English, and the murderer was French. Wasn’t he?
“You are a servant of this house, miss?” the man asked. He spoke with a funny kind of accent, not American or English. It reminded Prue of the dockworkers in New York.
“No,” Prue said. “I mean, yes. Well, in a manner of speaking. Doing servants’ tasks and such, but I ain’t being paid.”
“Not paid? How could you be held here, thus, like a slave?”
“No! It ain’t . . . I’m just helping out Beatrice. The housekeeper. She’s giving me lessons, like.”
The man peered over Prue’s shoulder. “Is Beatrice within?”
“She’s at market.”
“Ah.” A pause.
Prue clung to the door handle. The sky overhead churned dark. It hit her now, how alone they were. And how much this feller resembled an ogre in a pantomime.
“I must go inside,” Prue whispered.
“Of course.” The man bowed and set off towards the carriageway gate.
Prue went inside. Her fingers shook as she fastened and refastened the latch.
Something didn’t tally up right. That feller’s words, his gestures, had been gentlemanly in spite of his scruffy duds. He hadn’t said why he’d been in the garden. He hadn’t carried a parcel or a crate, as a deliveryman would. And how had he gotten past the carriageway gate?
One thing was certain: Prue couldn’t mention that she’d spoken to a stranger to Ophelia, or Beatrice, or anyone. She was supposed to stay sealed up tight in the house, like a pickle in a jar.
* * *
If Ophelia was to attend the ballet, she required something to wear. Her Mrs. Brand bombazine was not the crispest, to say the least. And something told her that muddy boots wouldn’t go over too well at the Paris Opera. She had fretted over it all through luncheon—a mysterious greenish soup and cold, tough meat—and the only place she could think of from which to borrow a fancy gown was Henrietta’s bedchamber.
Once Ophelia was in the bedchamber, she decided to have a more thorough look-see for clues before choosing a gown.
Henrietta wasn’t what you’d call a fastidious lady. Certainly, she was an expert on the authenticity of gemstones, and she could discern the name of a gentleman’s tailor with the briefest glance at his jacket lining. Still, her chamber was in more disarray than Ophelia ever recalled her dressing room at the Varieties having been. However, there was no blood anywhere, nor anything broken. No train ticket stubs, no letters, no photographs of a dashing gentleman who wasn’t her husband.
Wait. Here was something Ophelia had overlooked the first time around: a small book on the dressing table, underneath a bottle of rosewater complexion tonic. How to Address Your Betters, by A Lady. Ophelia flipped through. Nothing but advice on kowtowing to European blue bloods, with some bits about which fork to use and when not to use your hankie thrown in. On the title page, someone had scribbled a dedication: May you use this in good stead.—Arty.
Arty? Just like Henrietta to have some fellow involved.
Ophelia replaced the book under the bottle and kept searching. A jumble of shoes on the carpet, withered roses on the mantel—aha. A half-burned letter in the grate. Ophelia crouched and shook off ash from the remnant of envelope. Nothing remained but a return address:
