Read Online Cinderella Six Feet Under by Maia Chance - Free Book Online Page A

flipped the card over. “Mercy.”
    The back of the card said, in a lady’s hurried hand,
Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties Broadway
.
    â€œThat’s where Prue and I worked—where
Henrietta
worked.”
    â€œIs that Henrietta’s handwriting?”
    â€œI believe it is. What does this mean?”
    â€œIt suggests that at some point, Sybille Pinet met her mother.”
    *   *   *
    Ophelia reckoned that riding about Paris in a closed carriage with a fellow was scandalous. But she knew that Penrose was an honorable gentleman. Besides which, her virtue was well-padded by the Mrs. Brand disguise. She asked Penrose to drop her two blocks from Hôtel Malbert.
    â€œI ought not be seen alighting from mysterious carriages by any of the household,” she said to Penrose as the driver handed her down. “And would you keep Sybille’s things? I don’t wish to explain the crate to anyone. I do wish I could attend the
Cendrillon
ballet.” She paused. She detested asking for things. “Professor, perhaps you might go to the
Cendrillon
ballet—if you have the time, I mean to say—and inform me of any clues about the connection between Sybille’s Cinderella getup and the ballet.”
    â€œPerhaps you would join me. This evening?”
    Ophelia considered. “I might be able to pull it off. I’ll meet you in the opera house lobby just before eight o’clock, if I’m able.”
    *   *   *
    When Ophelia returned to Hôtel Malbert, it was nearing one o’clock. The stepsisters were holed up in their salon—Ophelia heard them bickering through the doors. Baldewyn was polishing silver in the dining room. He did not greet Ophelia when she looked in, although his face grew instantly blotchy.
    Baldewyn hadn’t warmed to Mrs. Brand.
    Prue wasn’t upstairs. Ophelia searched for her, but only caught the lady’s maid, Lulu, trying on Eglantine’s fancy slippers in front of a mirror.
    Ophelia finally found Prue in, of all places, the kitchen.
    â€œPrue!” she cried. Prue bent over the plank table, sleeves rolled, hair like a tumbleweed, scrubbing away. “Where is Beatrice? Did you clean this whole kitchen yourself?”
    â€œSure did. It’s taken all morning. Beatrice went out to market hours ago but she ain’t come back. I reckon I’m supposed to cook luncheon, only I don’t know how.”
    â€œShe’s taking advantage.”
    â€œNot everyone in the wide world is trying to take advantage of little old me, Ophelia Flax. Matter of fact”—Prue lifted her chin—“I’m learning housewifing. I wish to be useful for a change.”
    â€œAnything that keeps you in the house and out of mischief is grand.” Ophelia told Prue how she’d encountered Professor Penrose.
    â€œPenrose!” Prue glanced at Ophelia. “Yes. You look right rosy and giddy.”
    â€œI’m wearing this sludgy face paint.”
    â€œThe giddy shines through. I
knew
he’d crop up again.”
    â€œBunkum.”
    Ophelia told Prue everything she had learned about her sister, Sybille, and how Sybille had had Howard DeLuxe’s name scribbled on the back of a card amongst her things.
    â€œI’d bet my boots Ma was sending Sybille to go work for the Varieties,” Prue said. “She was always sending girls to Howard. Howard paid her a finder’s fee for the good ones.”
    â€œYour mother wouldn’t take a finder’s fee for her own daughter!”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œWhy would Sybille wish to go to New York?”
    â€œDon’t know. Clean slate, maybe?” Prue kept scrubbing.
    *   *   *
    Once Gabriel was established in an elegant suite of rooms in the Hôtel Meurice, he sent a note to Lord and Lady Cruthlach with a messenger boy. If anyone knew about a murder connected to “Cinderella,” it would be that