“Fail to—humbug! I knew you were fibbing about why you’re here in Paris. And now”—she jabbed her umbrella at the placard—“I’ve got proof.”
“That I’ve traveled hundreds of miles to take in a ballet?”
“That you’re here on account of your everlasting, crumbly—and, might I add, downright nutty fairy tale obsession.” Ophelia thought of Sybille in that dress, missing a shoe. In a pumpkin patch. “To think I swallowed that line about you coming here to help me. You’re only in Paris on account of this ballet, and the way Sybille died.” She barged off across the square. Pigeons scattered.
Ophelia hadn’t believed for a second that the professor was in Paris because of her. But she’d wished to believe it. Ugh.
Penrose caught up and stopped her with a firm grip around her upper arm.
She wouldn’t look at him.
“Miss Flax,” Penrose said in a rough, low voice. “Please. Look at me.”
Ophelia breathed in and out three times. She lifted her gaze. The professor’s eyes, a clear, bright hazel behind his spectacles, looked like . . . they looked like home.
Madness. Home was four walls and a roof. Home couldn’t be a man. And what was wrong with her to think for even a second that home could be a man?
She wriggled her arm from his grasp. “What was it you wished to say?”
“You have made rather a large leap of logic, assuming that this ballet has anything to do with the murder.”
“But don’t you see? Sybille’s death must have had something to do with the ballet.”
“Because she was a dancer within the institution in which a Cinderella ballet is being performed? That hardly seems—”
“Don’t you know? Sybille, when we found her in the garden . . . she wore a fancy ball gown. Like Cinderella in the story. And there were squashes there, too—pumpkins, don’t you see? I hadn’t realized it until now, but . . . And her foot—well, she was missing her shoe.”
“Good God.”
“Quit pretending you didn’t know. Like I said, your acting isn’t exactly top rail.” Why did everything she said come out so ornery? Ophelia found herself fidgeting with the umbrella handle.
“How could I have known? I saw but one report in the newspaper. It made no mention of what the girl wore. My interest in the murder stemmed solely from a concern for your safety. Pray, listen. Allow me to assist you, Miss Flax. I shall stay in Paris as long as it takes to locate the marquise.”
“What of the university? Your students?”
“They’ll barely notice I am gone. If the police are not searching for Henrietta, as you said, then finding her might be quite a simple task. We will check all the hotels in the city, check the steamship passenger lists for all of this week’s sailings to New York—and elsewhere. She sounds like the sort who’d sail off to Bolivia.”
“If she met the King of Bolivia, then yes. Why do you wish to help me?”
Penrose paused. He adjusted his spectacles and gazed past her into the street. “To be honest, I am not quite certain.”
“Well, at least you’re finally being aboveboard with me.”
6
Gabriel could not convince Miss Flax to allow him to hire a carriage, so they walked all the way to Place Pigalle. Miss Flax kept her eyes on her Baedeker and the sights and left Gabriel alone with his guilt.