Cinderella Six Feet Under(59)

“Ah, oui,” Griffe said, studying the girl in question through opera glasses. “But a breast like a hen, non?”

For God’s sake. Gabriel raked a hand through his hair and continued pacing at the back of the box. As soon as he’d reached Prince Rupprecht’s box, Gabriel had sent an usher backstage to summon Caleb Grant. He’d told the usher that Grant was perhaps to be found in a room with a wardrobe—although he still couldn’t understand what that was supposed to signify.

Surely Grant would come. This was a bally prince’s box. Then Gabriel might be able to discern what that note had meant.

The audience sucked in a collective gasp.

“Mon Dieu.” Griffe rose halfway in his chair, opera glasses glued to his eyes. “It is Mademoiselle Stonewall!”

Gabriel froze, mid-pace. “I beg your pardon?”

“Ah, how sweet she is in green!”

“Give me that!” Prince Rupprecht snatched the opera glasses from Griffe. “Indeed, it is she!”

Gabriel fancied his neck was in danger of exploding. “Miss Fl—Miss Stonewall, my cousin, onstage?” He strode to the prince, grabbed the opera glasses, and scanned the stage. “Oh dear God. It is.”

Dancers dressed as mice and flowers crowded the stage, while Cinderella pirouetted before the footlights.

But . . . there.

Miss Flax, in her green evening gown, crawled on all fours towards the wings. A mouse hopped over her.

“Why the deuce is she onstage?” Gabriel muttered.

“She has got rather nice ankles,” Prince Rupprecht said.

“She is a lady,” Gabriel said coldly. “Pray do not speak of her in that fashion.”

Prince Rupprecht turned to Griffe. “She is onstage to impress you, you must understand. Wishes to stand out in your mind as a daredevil—and to show off her fine stems and flower petals, too.” He chortled.

Gabriel was just weighing the cost of cuffing a prince on the nose—and perhaps a count, too—when Miss Flax crawled out of sight into the wings.

The usher poked his head through the curtains at the rear of the box and gave a tactful cough.

All three men swiveled around.

“I regret to say,” the usher said, “that Monsieur Grant is dead.”





18




Gabriel found Miss Flax in a backstage corridor surrounded by a ring of dancers and theater workers, all berating her in French. She caught sight of Gabriel.

“Get me out of this, won’t you?” she called.

Gabriel strode through the ring of people, grabbed Miss Flax’s hot, gloved hand, and pulled her away through the still-yelling group—they were all going on about her ruining the performance, with a few accusations thrown in that she was some sort of anarchist or else a saboteur sent from the ballet company in London.

“Where are we going?” she asked as he whisked her along.

“I’m taking you home. What were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t my fault! I was pushed onstage! I was trying to save that ballerina! And did she demonstrate even the smallest bit of gratitude? No!”

“Caleb Grant is dead.”

“What?” Miss Flax stopped walking.

Footsteps clattered towards them, and a harried little fellow in side-whiskers and two uniformed gendarmes burst around a corner. Gabriel and Miss Flax pressed themselves against the wall so the men could pass.

Miss Flax’s eyes met Gabriel’s.

“No,” he said.

“We’ve got to.”

“I cannot continue to enable your harebrained schemes—”

“Hurry, before it’s too late. And I’m not harebrained, if you don’t mind. Merely resourceful.”

“Resourceful?” Somehow, Gabriel found himself following Miss Flax as she hurried down the corridor after the men. How precisely did she convince him, against his better judgment, time after time? “You are not simply resourceful, my dear. I daresay you will stop at nothing.”

*

They followed the clattering footsteps of Side-Whiskers and the gendarmes, and caught sight of them in the dressing rooms corridor. The performance was still going onstage, so dancers darted here and there.

The men did not stop there, but continued down a twisty flight of stairs into the bowels of the theater.

The three men didn’t notice Ophelia and Penrose, following at a distance. They spoke in low, anxious tones. They came to an open doorway. Beyond lay a huge, dim room filled with costume-stuffed racks. The three men went inside.