All as familiar to Ophelia as the back of her own hand. Of course, the violinists in Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties sounded much more screechy.
“Why are you still following me, Professor?” Ophelia asked. Encountering Professor Penrose, after months of scrubbing him out of her mind, made her heart flutter like a hatchling chick. And that was simply irksome. She felt angry at him, too, and embarrassed in his presence, and she was unsure how to behave. She figured she was missing a piece of her mind, a piece that other people had. The piece that allowed a person to do things like fall in love or believe in fairy tales.
Penrose drew something from his pocket and unfolded it. The morgue drawing of the dead girl that had appeared in all the newspapers. “You did not think to bring one of these along, did you?”
Drat.
“And I speak French,” Penrose said. “I might be your translator.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a terrible actor. I know you’ve got better things to do.”
“I may have other things to do, but they are not necessarily better.”
Well. A translator would make snooping easier.
“Fine,” Ophelia said. “But I’m in charge.”
He smiled.
Ophelia peeked through an open door. A rehearsal room: high ceiling, tall windows, wooden floors, mirrors. Rows of lady dancers clung to wooden barres, kicking their legs like wind-up tin soldiers. They wore tulle skirts over tight linen chemises, white woolen stockings, and ballet slippers. In the corner, a gentleman in a waistcoat banged away at a piano, a cigar dangling between a moustache and beard. All the yelling was coming from a gentleman in a black suit. He was long and snake-narrow, with a pointy black beard. He paced between the rows of dancers, poking and prodding them.
“Who is that man?” Penrose asked Ophelia.
“A dancing master, I think. Dancing masters oversee the daily classes for the company, and the rehearsals and such.” The dancing master in Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties had also been a juggler of flaming sticks and a teller of bawdy jokes. Never mind that.
“Would he know every dancer in the company?”
“Yes.”
Ophelia and Penrose waited for several minutes. The class ended. Sweaty dancers streamed through the doors, pulling knitted wraps around their shoulders and chattering.
Ophelia and Penrose went in.
The man with the pointy beard hovered beside the piano, going over something with the pianist.
“Would you show him the picture?” Ophelia whispered to Penrose. “Ask him straight out if she was a dancer here?”
Pointy Beard and the pianist glanced up in surprise as Ophelia and Penrose drew close.
“Oui?” Pointy Beard said, looking down his nose.
Penrose said something in French.
“Ah, you are an Englishman,” Pointy Beard said. He had an American accent—Philadelphian, Ophelia would bet.
Peculiar.
“I do apologize for the intrusion,” Penrose said, “Mister—?”
“Grant. Caleb Grant. And you are—”
“Lord Harrington.”
“Ah.” Grant dismissed the pianist with a shooing motion.
“I, and my”—Penrose glanced at Ophelia—“aunt, wish to confirm the identity of a young girl who was, most regrettably, found dead three days ago in Le Marais.” He showed Grant the picture.
Grant barely glanced at it. “Sybille Pinet.”
Ophelia’s heart leapt. “She was a dancer in this company?”
“In the corps de ballet. Beautiful, graceful, if not particularly virtuosic or—”
“I knew it! Her feet, see—well, the police have not—the police don’t know who she is. Why didn’t you—”
“The police never asked, madam. If they had, I would most certainly have answered their questions.”