Cinderella Six Feet Under(110)

“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 H?tel 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.”