Cinderella Six Feet Under(21)

“Sure did. It’s taken all morning. Beatrice went out to market hours ago but she ain’t come back. I reckon I’m supposed to cook luncheon, only I don’t know how.”

“She’s taking advantage.”

“Not everyone in the wide world is trying to take advantage of little old me, Ophelia Flax. Matter of fact”—Prue lifted her chin—“I’m learning housewifing. I wish to be useful for a change.”

“Anything that keeps you in the house and out of mischief is grand.” Ophelia told Prue how she’d encountered Professor Penrose.

“Penrose!” Prue glanced at Ophelia. “Yes. You look right rosy and giddy.”

“I’m wearing this sludgy face paint.”

“The giddy shines through. I knew he’d crop up again.”

“Bunkum.”

Ophelia told Prue everything she had learned about her sister, Sybille, and how Sybille had had Howard DeLuxe’s name scribbled on the back of a card amongst her things.

“I’d bet my boots Ma was sending Sybille to go work for the Varieties,” Prue said. “She was always sending girls to Howard. Howard paid her a finder’s fee for the good ones.”

“Your mother wouldn’t take a finder’s fee for her own daughter!”

“Maybe.”

“Why would Sybille wish to go to New York?”

“Don’t know. Clean slate, maybe?” Prue kept scrubbing.

*

Once Gabriel was established in an elegant suite of rooms in the H?tel Meurice, he sent a note to Lord and Lady Cruthlach with a messenger boy. If anyone knew about a murder connected to “Cinderella,” it would be that ominous, fairy tale relic–collecting pair. Although Gabriel did not count Lord and Lady Cruthlach as friends, he had done business of sorts with them before, and their Paris address was recorded in his notebook.

While Gabriel waited for his answer, he enlisted the hotel concierge to make discreet inquiries as to whether a lady fitting Henrietta’s description was registered in any of the finer hotels in Paris. He also requested that the concierge make a similar investigation into the passenger lists of steamships that had sailed from France in the last week. Henrietta could have left by rail or coach, but there was no way to check on that.

Then there was the matter of the convent in which Sybille Pinet had been schooled. The landlady had said its name had something to do with stars. He requested a list of every convent orphanage in Paris.

These inquiries would come at great expense to Gabriel, but he did not much care. He had inherited his father’s vast estate along with his title, and having neither a wife nor any costly vices, he was somewhat at a loss as to how to spend it.

Next, Gabriel walked several blocks to the florist’s shop of the trade card found in Miss Pinet’s crate. The fashionable shop was perfumed by blooms that glowed like sickbed dreams in the cold, gray afternoon. It was warm inside, and thick with smartly dressed ladies. The shopkeeper merely laughed when Gabriel asked if he could recall a lady matching Henrietta’s description. Customers were blurs to persons in such trades. A dead end, then.

When Gabriel returned to his hotel from the florist’s shop, the messenger boy had his answer: Lord and Lady Cruthlach would gladly receive him. Immediately.

*

Lord and Lady Cruthlach’s mansion would have done rather nicely as an illustration in a gothic horror novel: pointed black turrets, leering monkey gargoyles, leaded windows, evil-looking spires. Up on the roof, crows bobbed up and down, cawing.

Gabriel rapped on the front door. When it opened, a red-haired ogre of a manservant filled the doorway. Hume. Gabriel had met him before, unfortunately. Hume’s scarlet livery coat could have fit a bull. His knee breeches terminated in gold braid, and white silk stockings encased his Highland clansman’s calves. His feet were shod in scarlet satin, Louis-heeled slippers as big as soup tureens.

“Good afternoon, Hume,” Gabriel said.

“His Lordship and Her Ladyship await, Lord Harrington,” Hume said in a gravelly Scots accent.

In the upstairs sitting room, draperies shut out the day. Upholstered furniture, carved tables, and sumptuous rugs clogged the stifling hot chamber. The throbbing, orange fire threw everything into velvety silhouette.

“He comes,” a creaky voice said. “Wake up, my love, he comes.”

Hume took up a post against the wall.

Gabriel approached the fire. Two forms slumped side by side on a sofa.