Was that a threat?
Inspector Foucher, from the office of the commissaire, arrived at half past eight. Ophelia and Malbert received him in a formal salon. Foucher was one of those fellows with twig legs and a barrel chest. Small brown eyes like chocolate drops peered out from a swollen face. He held a bowler hat.
“Madame Brand,” he said in a weary tone, “I am a busy man. What is it?”
“Has the murderer been arrested yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Ah. Well, I have made a most fascinating realization that might aid in your investigation. Her feet, you may recall—or, at least, the one that I saw—were in a most pitiful condition.”
“The girl’s feet were injured, oui.”
“Both of them?”
“Oui, as the result of her body having been dragged to its place in the garden.”
“I have a different theory. I propose that she was a dancer of the ballet.”
Malbert shifted in his chair.
“The ballet!” Foucher chuckled.
“I do not jest, Inspector. The feet of ballerinas are subject to the most grievous ill-treatment and injury as the result of supporting their entire weight upon the very tips of their toes.” Ophelia had seen it dozens of times, both in the circus and the theater. One dancer she’d known, Florrie, had had bunions like ripe crabapples.
Inspector Foucher frowned. “How, may I inquire, does a respectable lady like you know what the feet of a ballerina look like?”
“Oh, well.” Ophelia smoothed her cuff. “In Boston, you see, I am a member of the Ladies’ League for the Betterment of Fallen Angels.”
“How charitable,” Malbert murmured.
Ophelia leaned towards Foucher. “There are many fallen angels, you understand, employed in the theater.”
“Ah, oui.”
“I urge you, Inspector, to consider searching for the deceased young lady’s identity within whatever ballet theaters Paris possesses.”
“You almost seem to know who the victim was.”
“I do not. But it is worth investigating the ballet theaters, is it not?”
“Madame, I do understand that you are discomfited by this event. However, I must request that you do not intrude in police investigations. Indeed, I do realize that the gentle sex is prone to fancy, to making correlations where there are none—”
“Applesauce!”
“—but we officers of the police are trained to be rationale.”
“What of the coincidence of the perished girl being placed in her own mother’s garden? And what, for that matter, are you doing in the way of locating the Marquise Henrietta? I must most emphatically suggest that the two concerns must be related, even, perhaps, interlocking.”
“Madame, I bid you good morning.” Foucher made a stiff bow and dodged out.
Ophelia stared after him. Then she looked at Malbert sitting lumpishly in his chair. “It is an outrage!” she said. “It is almost as though—yes, it is as though the police are deliberately averting their eyes from any evidence that does not fit their theory. Rationale? Horsefeathers! That Foucher is a buffoon, or lazy. Or both.”
“Madame Brand, I beg you to calm yourself. Come. Join me for a stroll in the garden. I would be most interested to hear of your charitable work in Boston.”
Ophelia stared at Malbert. Did the recent presence of a corpse in his garden not trouble him in the least? All of a sudden, Ophelia made up her mind: it was time to take matters into her own hands. To Tartarus with the police! She would discover the dead girl’s identity; she would learn where Henrietta had gone.
“No, thank you,” Ophelia said to Malbert. “I’ve just remembered a most pressing engagement.”
She hurried upstairs to her chamber. Prue was snoozing with the cat.
Ophelia cleaned her teeth at the washbasin. Then she dug the Baedeker and her reticule out of her carpetbag, tied on her black taffeta bonnet, and shrugged on her woolen cloak. Downstairs, she found an umbrella and trooped out of the house.
4