Cinderella Six Feet Under(46)

“On an expedition to the powder room? I reckon that’s possible, but it’s a little too coincidental for my palate. If Mr. Grant killed Sybille, he would have needed help from someone inside H?tel Malbert. Austorga was inside. She could have easily stolen the carriageway key to let Grant through to place the body. What if Austorga and Mr. Grant—and Madame Babin, too—were in cahoots?”

“We still cannot account for why Grant would have placed Miss Pinet’s body in the Malberts’ garden. And have you any theory as to why Miss Austorga would wish to do away with Miss Pinet?”

“Well, if Austorga knew Sybille was her stepsister, maybe she was, I don’t know, envious?”

Penrose smiled. “Envious of her beautiful stepsister? Perhaps Prince Charming preferred her?”

“You don’t have to put it like that.”

“Don’t I? I have another theory: if Austorga did indeed help to kill Miss Pinet—”

“Which, I allow, is hard to picture.”

“—she did it for the stomacher.”

“Why?”

“Because the stomacher—if it indeed exists—would be a precious family heirloom.”

It made sense—just so long as you believed that flapdoodle about Cinderella being a real lady. Ophelia hated to believe that. It went against every particle of common sense she possessed.

“Would you ask the Mademoiselles Malbert if they know of the stomacher?” Penrose said.

“I’ll add it to my list.”

They searched the apartment high and low and they did not discover the brown paper parcel, although they found one more Siamese cat under the bed.

“All right then, we ought not tempt fate,” Penrose said. “Should we go?” He held open the apartment’s front door.

Ophelia made one last rummage through the pockets of a greatcoat that hung by the door. “Wait. What’s this?” She pulled out a small, black-bound book. She flipped through it. Minute penciled handwriting filled ten or twelve pages. “Look. Lists of names.”

“Gentlemen’s names.”

“Wait. No—not exactly. Look. For every gentleman’s name there is at least one girl’s name in the second column. See? Duke of Strozzi, and then, Adele and Diana.”

“Duke of Strozzi. English. I assume this is Grant’s book, then, and not Madame Babin’s.”

“The girls haven’t got surnames. That’s funny.”

“I do not suppose it’s really very humorous.”

Ophelia glanced up. “You’ve got that sickly grimace on again. The one that says you’re afraid of tarnishing my innocence and you might start coughing.”

Penrose didn’t answer. He’d taken the notebook. “I don’t see Sybille listed anywhere.” He scanned the rest of the pages, squinting because he didn’t have his spectacles on. “Ah,” he said. “Here is a gentleman I am acquainted with. Lord Dutherbrook.”

“You know him?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“He’s matched up with someone by the name of Clotilde.”

Penrose slid the book back into the greatcoat pocket. “I believe Lord Dutherbrook haunts the Jockey Club.”

“Jockey? A shrimp, is he?”

“Quite the contrary. No. The Jockey Club is merely a gentleman’s club that, among other things, has rather equine propensities.”

*

“I’ve been thinking—what if Caleb Grant is Sybille’s father?” Ophelia said, once Penrose had crept back down to the cellar to change and they’d gone back outside to the street. “He is an American.”

“But she grew up in an orphanage. And didn’t you say that Sybille’s father was a French diplomat?” Penrose smeared grease off his cheeks with his handkerchief.

“Well, that’s what Henrietta told Prue. But Henrietta isn’t known for her sterling word. And if he’s Sybille’s father, then he’d know Henrietta, too—even though he said he didn’t when I asked him yesterday. What if Henrietta looked him up when she arrived in Paris, and something went wrong?”

“I suspect that learning precisely what Grant was doing, matching gentlemen’s names with girl’s names in his notebook, will shed a good deal of light on the matter. I’ll speak to Lord Dutherbrook. From what I recall, he rarely stirs from his chair in his club.”