Cinderella Six Feet Under(69)

Beatrice pounded on the closet door. Her cries were muffled.

With a steely grip, the crone dragged Prue out the door and as far as the carriageway—where the gate stood wide open. When Prue saw Lord and Lady Cruthlach’s carriage in the street, she made up her mind: she’d rather take her chances getting shot than go like lambykins to slaughter in that carriage.

She wrenched her arm from the crone’s grasp and started running.

A gunshot cracked the air. Prue kept going.

Prue had been a street rat as a tyke. Ma had given her free reign to roam the streets of their neighborhood, since Ma was usually too occupied to do mother-type things. And New York street rats were mean. Prue didn’t have the fighting spirit, so she’d preferred to dodge, not tussle with, other ragamuffins.

The trick to a successful dodge was to make lots of turns. If you kept running in a straight line, your pursuer could just catch up and collar you. But clever urchins on the run made sudden turns, twists, and switchbacks, and survived, just like rats, with a zigzag kind of cunning.

Prue found a place to turn. And then she turned.

*

When Ophelia and Penrose arrived at Rue de la Paix, only a few delivery vans and errand boys were about. The door of Maison Fayette was shut tight.

“Too early,” Ophelia said.

Just as they were turning away, the door cracked open.

“Josie!” Ophelia exclaimed without thinking. Josie had met Miss Stonewall, not Mrs. Brand.

Josie peered up at her with puzzled eyes. “Oui, madame?”

Drat. Ophelia resolved to keep her trap shut.

Penrose said, “Is Madame Fayette within?”

“Non, monsieur. We do not expect her at the shop today. She is quite overcome with fatigue as of late.”

“But you, mademoiselle, are working?”

Josie appeared to be on the brink of nervous exhaustion. Her eyes were sunken, and bloodred cracks extended past the corners of her lips.

“I have been working all night. The prince’s ball, you see. . . .”

“Ah. Gowns to be finished.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Would you be so kind as to tell me the address of Madame Fayette’s private residence?”

“Oh, non! I could never—”

“Please,” Ophelia said. “It’s most urgent. It concerns the gentleman’s death at the ballet last night—did you hear of it?”

“Oui . . . but you do not suppose Madame had anything to do with that poor gentleman’s death?”

“I do not wish to upset you,” Penrose said, “but yes, I’m afraid she might.”

Josie’s eyes darted up and down the sidewalk. She looked behind her, into the shadows of the shop’s foyer. She leaned close. “Eighty-six Rue Vaneau.” She clamped the door shut.

*

Rue Vaneau lay on the left side of the river, a genteel avenue of apartment blocks with iron balconies and steep slate roofs.

Penrose and Ophelia got past the building’s concierge by using his Lord Harrington calling card. They climbed three flights of stairs, and Penrose rapped on Madame Fayette’s door.

A maid answered, and she and Penrose held a whispered confabulation in French. Then Penrose passed the maid another one of his calling cards.

“Madame Fayette is abed,” Penrose told Ophelia as they hiked back down the stairs. “I told the maid we will return in an hour. In the meantime, we aren’t too terribly far away from the old acquaintances of mine that I mentioned.”

“Old, as in longtime? Or old, like ancient?”

“Both.”





21




Twenty minutes later, Ophelia and Penrose’s carriage stopped in a gnarled side street. A soot-streaked mansion rose up, with pointy turrets, mullioned windows, and grinning monkey gargoyles.

“Looks like a witch’s house,” Ophelia said. They climbed the front steps.

“You’re frightfully close to the mark.” Penrose knocked on the front door. “Lord and Lady Cruthlach believe they possess . . . uncanny blood.”

“And why exactly might they be Cherrien’s clients?”

“Why? Because they believe in fairy tales, my dear.”

Oh, my.

After a minute or so, a bulky, ginger-haired footman opened the door. He was stuffed into crimson satin livery, high-heeled shoes, and—oddly enough—a white apron. “Lord Harrington,” he said in a Scots accent.