“Oh?” Ophelia leaned closer. “How so?”
“Because the gate was left open that night, you see, and the murderer dragged that girl’s body in through the gate, and only after the police arrived did Beatrice notice that the carriageway gate key, which she always keeps on a little hook at the bottom of the kitchen stair, was missing.”
“Good heavens!” Ophelia said. “But the murderer is a derelict with no connection to the house. How did he obtain the key?”
“No one knows.”
“Beatrice must have lost the key,” Eglantine said. “She drinks like a fish when she plays cards with her friends behind the marketplace. Lulu told me so.”
“Is there only one key?” Ophelia asked.
“Two,” Austorga said. “The one kept in the kitchen, which Beatrice uses to open the gate for tradesmen’s deliveries, and the one kept by the coachman, Henri. But Henri said he still has his key.”
“Perhaps the murderer dragged the body through the gate behind the coachman,” Ophelia said.
“Surely Henri would have noticed something,” Eglantine said sharply.
“Yes, Henri would have noticed,” Seraphina said in a small voice.
“Seraphina!” Mrs. Smythe exclaimed. “Pray do not speak of the servants.”
Seraphina took a sullen bite of bonbon.
“I must insist that we discuss something more pleasant,” Eglantine said. “Mademoiselle Smythe—are you simply dying with envy over my ball gown?”
“Oh yes, quite. Dying,” Seraphina said, chewing. She nudged her enormous spectacles upwards.
*
“I traveled to Paris after reading an astonishing report in The Times of a murder in Le Marais,” Gabriel said to Lady Cruthlach after interminable and antiquated pleasantries. “I wished to meet you, to learn what you know of the matter and, perhaps, to propose another . . . exchange.”
“Oh yes, Lord Harrington,” Lady Cruthlach said, treacle-sweet. “Our last trade was most beneficial.”
For her, perhaps. The Tyrolean black wolf’s tooth they had given him, in exchange for a rare specimen of Siberian Amanita muscaria, had been a fraud.
“However, I know not of the astonishing newspaper report to which you refer,” Lady Cruthlach said.
“You did not notice the report of the girl found murdered in the garden of a house in Le Marais?”
“We do not worry ourselves with the rush and stew of the present day. You know as well as we do that the past is everything and all.”
Lady Cruthlach didn’t know about the house, then. Gabriel could continue to guard the secret. On the other hand, she might know something that he did not.
Gabriel drew the Charles Perrault volume from his jacket. He slid out the loose sheet, and unfolded it.
“Well?” Lady Cruthlach said. “What is this?”
Lord Cruthlach wheezed softly.
“My notes,” Gabriel said. “A transcription, rather, of an excised passage from Perrault’s ‘Cendrillon.’” There was actually more than one passage, but he would begin with this one.
“Excised passage?” Lady Cruthlach licked the corner of her mouth. “I knew not of such—such treasure. How did you come by this?”
“I stumbled upon it a few years ago, quite by chance, whilst researching ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ in a rare first-edition housed in the Sorbonne.”
“Well? Come now, don’t be a tease. Read it aloud. My eyesight is no longer good.”
“The excised passage was appended to the moral at the end of the tale. It denotes the address of the Cendrillon house—the house, that is, in which Cinderella dwelled with her father, stepmother, and stepsisters. The address was removed from subsequent editions of the volume, no doubt in order to protect the privacy of the Roque-Fabliau family.”