Cinderella Six Feet Under(62)

After a few minutes, the sobs left off and Prue opened her eyes. Her breath caught. “Someone’s here,” she mumbled against Dalziel’s shoulder.

He spun around, placing himself in front of Prue.

A figure with an umbrella stepped out from behind a marble angel. Something white flashed around the face.

By gum, it was a nun. A nun in a flowing black habit and a white—what was it? Oh, yes—a white wimple. Once in Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties, Prue had been one of a whole chorus line of naughty nuns who favored red stockings. But surely this nun wouldn’t be caught dead in anything but soot-black socks.

The nun drew close and spoke briskly in French. Her eyes fixed on Prue’s face. Sourness puckered her mouth, yet her eyes were kind.

Dalziel turned to Prue. “She says her name is Sister Alphonsine, of the Pensionnat Sainte Estelle. She came here to lay flowers upon the grave and hid when she saw us coming. She asks if you are the twin sister of Sybille, because she prepared Sybille with her own hands for burial, so she knows that she is truly dead. Shall I tell her that you are her sister?”

“Sure. Tell her everything.” Everyone trusted nuns, right?

Sister Alphonsine gripped her umbrella hard as she spoke with Dalziel, and her eyes kept darting back to Prue.

“She says you are in danger,” Dalziel said.

“Danger! Does she know anything about my ma?”

“No. I asked her. But she says that because you look so much like Sybille, the murderer could strike again.”

“That’s what the police said. Wait. Ask her why she didn’t tell the police who Sybille was.”

Dalziel asked her. Sister Alphonsine did some more sharp talking.

“She says that she wrote to the police, to someone called Inspector Foucher, and informed him of Sybille’s identity, but he never replied. She begs that you stay at the convent, where you will be safe, until the murderer is caught.”

“Bunk in a convent?” How Ma would laugh at that one. “I’ll be just fine—as long as your grandmother and Hume leave me be.”

Sister Alphonsine looked like she wished to say more, but after a long hesitation she crunched away on the path. She stole one last look over her shoulder before she swished out of sight around a tomb.

“Are you ready to go?” Dalziel asked. “Her talk of murderers has made me feel wary. I ought not keep you out any longer.”

Prue gazed one last time at Sybille’s headstone. “I’m ready.”





19




Dalziel ordered the driver—a hired driver, not Lord and Lady Cruthlach’s—to go to H?tel Malbert by way of the Pensionnat Sainte Estelle.

The nunnery was on a corner: a tall, spiked iron fence and bare bushes, with a blocky stone building behind.

“If the occasion should arise that you needed to know of its location,” Dalziel said.

“You ought to train to be a lawyer,” Prue muttered.

“I intend to, once I have completed my studies at the Sorbonne.” Dalziel smiled.

His smile was too fetching, and Prue flicked her gaze out the window. She had no business admiring Dalziel’s beautiful black eyes and white teeth. She was in love with Hansel. Wasn’t she?

Ma had always said, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Well actually, she’d said a man in the hand (and then she’d trill with laughter). Was Prue’s admiration for Dalziel proof that she was becoming . . . just like Ma?

When Prue knocked on the front door of H?tel Malbert because there was no other way to get in, Baldewyn opened it. Lucky he never asked questions. He only looked a little shirty. Prue bolted upstairs.

Sleep came hard. Prue shivered, even with the fat ginger cat purring like a locomotive on top of her and a nice coal fire winking in the grate. She couldn’t stop seeing Sybille’s headstone, all mixed up with the jerky motions and pearl-tooth grins of a dozen windup Cinderellas.

*

Gabriel bade Miss Flax farewell and watched her crawl through a sidewalk-level window into the cellar of H?tel Malbert. He would have liked to help her, but she insisted upon doing it herself. There was a thump—had she fallen?—and then she lifted up a hand to the window in farewell.

No other lady in the world was quite like Miss Flax.

Gabriel turned up the collar of his greatcoat and began the long walk to his hotel.

*

Ophelia propped her feet on the grate in her bedchamber. The heat relieved her cold, crunched toes. It was near midnight, she estimated, but sleep would not come. After she’d clambered back through the cellar window (it had been most humiliating to have the professor watch her do that), she had checked on Prue and the ginger cat—both sound asleep—and readied herself for bed. She’d heard Malbert and the stepsisters noisily arrive. After that, the house fell silent.