Cinderella Six Feet Under(72)

“What’s cooking?” Ophelia said. “Witch’s brew?” She picked up the turtle. “You poor thing. I won’t allow them to boil you.”

The turtle shrank into its shell.

Hume emerged from an arched stone doorway near the stove. He held a big wooden spoon like a bludgeon. “I suppose you didn’t find what you were looking for?”

“The girl,” Penrose said.

“No girl here.”

“Where is the serving woman?”

“No serving woman here.”

“Don’t tell me you do all the work yourself.”

“I am the most loyal of servants.”

“Would you kill for your master and mistress?”

“If they instructed me to do so.”

“Did you kill Sybille Pinet and Caleb Grant?”

Hume’s eyes flicked to something on the table and back to Penrose.

A thick, age-splotted book lay open on the table amid the jars and bowls and funny ingredients. That’s what Hume had glanced at. Only a receipt book, surely. But then, why did Ophelia have the sense that all of Hume’s attention, all the fibers in his bulky body, were fastened tight to that book?

“What’s in the book?” Ophelia asked.

Beside her, the professor tensed.

*

When Miss Flax said book, Gabriel recognized in an instant all that he had overlooked. Lord and Lady Cruthlach had never desired the stomacher. What they desired was this book.

Gabriel had read of it, once. Mediocris Maleficorum. What a layman might simply call the Fairy Godmother’s spell book. It had been Gabriel’s understanding that the book—if it existed—was either an originary text of unimaginable power, or an intricate hoax.

Gabriel leaned over the book.

A thrill, almost painful, coursed up the nerves of his fingers and straight to his heart, which pumped still faster. Handwritten. Latin. Small, woodcut illustrations. The receipt at the top of the page read: Elixir Vitae XIII. An elixir of life.

Then, a sharp crack at the base of Gabriel’s skull. Hume’s spoon. Pain vibrated. Gabriel staggered forward and Hume whisked the spell book off the table just before Gabriel went sprawling across the top. Miss Flax cried out. Glass and porcelain vessels crashed. Something splatted on Gabriel’s cheek.

Hume strode towards a doorway with the spell book tucked under his arm.

“You really don’t think, man, that you’ll bring those two corpses back to life?” Gabriel yelled after him.

But there was no answer. Hume was gone.

*

“Don’t panic, Miss Flax,” the professor said as they swung out the front doors of the Cruthlach mansion. He was still wiping a slimy green smear from his cheek with his handkerchief.

Ophelia was on the verge of panic. She was sweating under her wig and she clutched the turtle to her chest. “I had it fixed in my head that this was where we’d find Prue. If she’s not here, she could be anywhere.” Oh dear Lord, Prue couldn’t, couldn’t be hurt. “Is your head all right, Professor? Shall I have a look?”

“Quite all right,” Penrose said quickly. “We’ve two more obvious possibilities—at least, if we are still operating under the assumption that the stomacher is central to the question of every death and disappearance.”

“Maybe Henrietta whisked Prue away—couldn’t that be it? Couldn’t she be safe and sound with her mother somewhere?” Ophelia heard the shrill edge in her own voice.

Penrose gingerly rubbed the back of his head, where Hume had conked him with the spoon. “Yes. Yes, that would certainly be—”

“You don’t think Prue is—that she’s a goner, do you?” Fury suddenly bubbled in Ophelia. “I’ll find who took her, and I’ll—I’ll make them sorry!”

“We’ll go to visit Colifichet in his shop. That is the first order of business. He has evidently seen the stomacher. He knows, because of the ballet, that the stomacher is related to the story of ‘Cendrillon.’ And most important, at one point or another Colifichet must have encountered Sybille Pinet.”





22




COLIFICHET & FILS, the gilt lettering on one of the arched windows read. The carriage stopped at the curb.

“Are you ready, Miss Flax?” Penrose asked.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Ophelia gently touched the turtle, who she’d placed on the seat. “The little fellow hasn’t so much as glanced out since I picked him up in that kitchen.”