Clara tapped ash into a vase full of withered flowers. “I am the Marquise de la Roque-Fabliau.”
Ophelia’s breath caught. “You are Miss Eglantine’s mother? And Miss Austorga’s?”
“What a curious old auntie you are. Did no one ever warn you that curiosity killed the cat? Yes. Babin is my maiden name.”
“And Malbert?”
“Their father. Odious little fungus.”
“And you are still married?”
“In the eyes of the church and the state.”
“What about Henrietta?”
“Puh! Henrietta! A grasping vixen, that one. She is quite, quite welcome to the putrid slug. Not for a single minute have I ever wished to have Malbert back. I left him many years ago, once our daughters were old enough to do without a mother. I was never very fond of those two, anyway. Ugly creatures. Eglantine is devious, too, and Austorga has a slow wit. She finds me at the opera house now and then, and attempts to engage me in mother-daughter repartee. Disgusting.”
Not exactly a mother hen, was she? But this explained what Austorga had been doing backstage that night.
“As the Marquise de la Roque-Fabliau,” Penrose said, “—and I suppose you are not lying about that?”
“Why would I lie? It makes me ill to admit it.”
“All right then. As the marquise, you must have been aware of your husband’s family’s rather unusual claim to share an ancestor with the lady called Cinderella.”
Ophelia tapped her toe. How did the professor always manage to steer the ship into the fairy tale channel?
“Isabeau d’Amboise,” Clara said. “Yes. I never heard the end of it. But they always left out the bit about being descended from the wicked stepmother, too.”
“Then you were also aware of the provenance of the diamond stomacher,” Penrose said.
Clara picked up a half-empty wineglass and sniffed it. “Yes.”
“Surely you noticed that the bodice of the ballet costume replicated the stomacher.”
“I did. But I thought nothing of it.” She polished off the wine.
“Why not?”
“Does it surprise you that I do not much care about that foolish tale and that dreary old stomacher? If you wish to know why the ballet costume replicated the stomacher, you must go and ask Prince Rupprecht. He commissioned the ballet, you know. Caleb told me that he took an inordinate interest in all of the scenery and costume design.”
Ophelia leaned forward. “Really? Prince Rupprecht?”
“Would you please leave, now?” Clara rose from her stool and stretched out on the sofa. “I am tired, and weary of this game. Go and play detective somewhere else.”
*
“Well, scratch the notion of Henrietta wishing to divorce Malbert,” Ophelia said, once they were back in the hired carriage parked in the street. “Because a lady can’t divorce a fellow she’s never been married to.”
“Perhaps Henrietta had enlisted the lawyer for other reasons entirely.”
“You mean, maybe Henrietta is the lawyer’s client?”
“She is connected to him somehow, judging by the half-burned envelope bearing his address in her grate.”
“But what would Henrietta want with that stomacher?”
“It is valuable.”
“But she’s got no right to it, no legal right, since she’s not really Malbert’s wife. Besides, if Henrietta is the lawyer’s client, that would make her the murderer, right? And I can’t see it. Henrietta would double cross anyone, but she wouldn’t kill anyone. Especially not her own daughter.”
“If Henrietta was not legally married to Malbert, the Misses Eglantine and Austorga, and Malbert himself, do not have credible motives for doing away with Henrietta. They were not bound to her in any way.”
“You mean to say, they could have simply kicked her out.”
“Yes. And now they are keeping it quiet.”
“Why?”