Cinderella Six Feet Under(16)

Drat.

“And I speak French,” Penrose said. “I might be your translator.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a terrible actor. I know you’ve got better things to do.”

“I may have other things to do, but they are not necessarily better.”

Well. A translator would make snooping easier.

“Fine,” Ophelia said. “But I’m in charge.”

He smiled.

Ophelia peeked through an open door. A rehearsal room: high ceiling, tall windows, wooden floors, mirrors. Rows of lady dancers clung to wooden barres, kicking their legs like wind-up tin soldiers. They wore tulle skirts over tight linen chemises, white woolen stockings, and ballet slippers. In the corner, a gentleman in a waistcoat banged away at a piano, a cigar dangling between a moustache and beard. All the yelling was coming from a gentleman in a black suit. He was long and snake-narrow, with a pointy black beard. He paced between the rows of dancers, poking and prodding them.

“Who is that man?” Penrose asked Ophelia.

“A dancing master, I think. Dancing masters oversee the daily classes for the company, and the rehearsals and such.” The dancing master in Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties had also been a juggler of flaming sticks and a teller of bawdy jokes. Never mind that.

“Would he know every dancer in the company?”

“Yes.”

Ophelia and Penrose waited for several minutes. The class ended. Sweaty dancers streamed through the doors, pulling knitted wraps around their shoulders and chattering.

Ophelia and Penrose went in.

The man with the pointy beard hovered beside the piano, going over something with the pianist.

“Would you show him the picture?” Ophelia whispered to Penrose. “Ask him straight out if she was a dancer here?”

Pointy Beard and the pianist glanced up in surprise as Ophelia and Penrose drew close.

“Oui?” Pointy Beard said, looking down his nose.

Penrose said something in French.

“Ah, you are an Englishman,” Pointy Beard said. He had an American accent—Philadelphian, Ophelia would bet.

Peculiar.

“I do apologize for the intrusion,” Penrose said, “Mister—?”

“Grant. Caleb Grant. And you are—”

“Lord Harrington.”

“Ah.” Grant dismissed the pianist with a shooing motion.

“I, and my”—Penrose glanced at Ophelia—“aunt, wish to confirm the identity of a young girl who was, most regrettably, found dead three days ago in Le Marais.” He showed Grant the picture.

Grant barely glanced at it. “Sybille Pinet.”

Ophelia’s heart leapt. “She was a dancer in this company?”

“In the corps de ballet. Beautiful, graceful, if not particularly virtuosic or—”

“I knew it! Her feet, see—well, the police have not—the police don’t know who she is. Why didn’t you—”

“The police never asked, madam. If they had, I would most certainly have answered their questions.”

“But,” Ophelia said, “surely a murder—”

“L’Opéra de Paris, as you are doubtless aware, is an institution that must maintain a certain degree of, shall we say, discretion. The newspapermen would feast like carrion eaters if Sybille’s death were linked to us. We cannot pack the seats with the dregs of a public that wishes to associate itself with sordid crimes when we count, particularly due to the current International Exhibition, great scientists, diplomats, important novelists, duchesses, even a prince of Persia, among our audience.”

What a windbag.

“I beg your pardon,” Penrose said, “but do you have any idea who killed the girl?”

Grant turned away and rifled through the stack of sheet music on the piano. “No.”

“Have you ever happened to meet the Marquise de la Roque-Fabliau?” Ophelia asked, just in case.

“I cannot say that I have.”

“She was—is—American, too. And she used to be on the stage.”

Grant’s nostrils pinched.

“Where did Sybille Pinet live?” Ophelia asked.

“I’ve no idea. Now”—Grant looked at his pocket watch—“I really must . . .”

“Of course,” Penrose said.