Dead and Buried (15 page)

‘I take it you were able to avoid the police?’ Rose appeared in the doorway from the parlor, arms filled with fresh paper, fresh ink-bottles, fresh quills.

‘Were they here?’

‘Not a one.’ She yielded the ink bottles and quills to his grasp, and he followed her through the open archway into the dining room. ‘When no one had come by noon I took the bull by the horns and went down to the Cabildo and asked Lieutenant Shaw what this rumor a market-woman had told me about you being wanted by the police was about. It was outrageous, I said, what some people don’t scruple to pass along to innocent women about their husbands. I must admit the good Lieutenant regarded me askance,’ she added. ‘But he said no, he’d heard nothing of the kind.’

‘Which doesn’t mean Blessinghurst didn’t storm into the Cabildo as you were leaving it,’ said January thoughtfully. ‘I doubt he did, though. The man’s hiding something, and not just,’ he added, ‘that he is not Lord Montague Blessinghurst at all, but rather an actor named Frank Stubbs. What’s this?’ He took the note Rose handed him and identified the seals – and the handwriting – even as he spoke.

Madeleine Mayerling.

He cracked the wax, unfolded the stiff sheet:

M’sieu J,

A most curious circumstance: Isobel Deschamps has left Mandeville – and apparently New Orleans – and will not, her Mama tells me, be back this year.

Yours,

M.M.

ELEVEN

‘
A
girl about to start her third season, leaving town before it begins?’ January leaned forward in the sturdy cypress-wood chair on Madeleine Mayerling’s gallery. He’d been surprised to find the lady still in New Orleans. Even here, fifteen feet above the shaded garden, the sunlight hummed with flies. ‘That’s unheard of.’

‘It’s not unheard of for a girl to
want
to leave,’ remarked Madame Mayerling. Her hand, beating a steady time with a lacquered fan, seemed to operate on its own, a large deft-boned machine. ‘What
is
unheard of is that her mother would let her . . . especially a mother with
another
daughter, fifteen years old, who can’t be brought out until the first one is engaged.’ For a few moments the only sounds were the far-off clatter of a wagon in the Rue Royale and the metallic whirr of the cicadas.

Then January asked softly, ‘What’s going on, Madame?’

‘I don’t know. But her mother wanted me out of there, when I went to call. No gossip, no queries about Aunt ’Lalie’s latest attempts to force my poor cousin Marie-Alceste into marriage with that frightful Cuban planter who’s been corresponding with her . . . Re-heated coffee from yesterday’s grounds, it tasted like, and stale cake.’

‘You shock me!’ January mimed shock, and Madame Mayerling laughed.

‘You don’t know what you’ve missed, not having had a good French Creole matron try to get you out of her drawing room without violating the letter of good manners.’

January, who had nearly been crippled by a good French Creole matron who saw nothing amiss in torturing slaves – or people who in her opinion should have been slaves – only replied, ‘On the contrary, Madame, good French Creole matrons have nothing on my mother when she’s trying to get herself shut of a caller. She has a tone of voice that would chill lemonade in Hell. But why? Did she give a reason?’

‘Half a dozen. The climate does not suit Isobel—’

‘She was raised here.’

Madame Mayerling spread her hands, graceful in lace house-mitts. ‘Did you imagine she was telling the truth?
She has been a little indisposed all summer
, even though I saw the girl a week ago at M’sieu Trulove’s ball and she was in the bloom of health . . . until she encountered milord Blessinghurst.
In truth, she has not been the same since her return from Paris
 . . .’ The young woman frowned suddenly and dropped her quite-excellent imitation of Celestine Deschamps’s piping voice and feathery gestures.

‘Is the sister still in New Orleans?’

‘Marie-Amalie,’ replied Madeleine grimly. ‘Yes, she is. And
she
is
not
out, much less in her third season – the point at which Mamas start writing to matchmaking cousins in other cities. If this Blessinghurst was Isobel’s lover – and is, as you say, an actor – I can understand her mother wanting to get her out of the city.’

‘Do you think that’s what’s happening? That Blessinghurst and Isobel became lovers in Paris, and young Foxford followed her here?’ If it was true, a young girl in such an affair would be in an impossible situation. Neither the Deschamps family nor its web of related clans of tightly inter-wed French Creoles would permit her to marry an actor, even if she and her sister were
not
heiresses to several extremely valuable cotton plantations. And, of course, if word got back to the Stuarts of Foxford Priory that the woman sought by His Young Lordship was not virgin – whether she had consented or been forced – there was no question of
that
marriage being permitted either.

He wondered how much the young Viscount knew.

‘When did she leave?’

‘Friday,’ said Madeleine.

‘The day of the funeral,’ said January. ‘The day after Patrick Derryhick’s quarrel with Blessinghurst – and the day after his death.’

By the time January left the Trepagier townhouse it was close to five. Only by hastening straight to the Countess’s through the beginnings of the afternoon rainstorm was he able to arrive before the house was ready to open its doors, and a visit to the Cabildo – to see what Viscount Foxford would have to say to the extraordinary coincidence of the mademoiselle’s departure – would have to wait. Neither Martin Quennell nor ‘Sir Montague Blessinghurst’ visited the Countess’s that evening. Indeed, on that hot Tuesday night only two men crossed the threshold between six and two the following morning. The Countess’s firmness, tact, and temper were tested to the utmost in keeping the girls from quarreling among themselves out of boredom.

January played softly and listened, without appearing to, to the girls talk among themselves: Marie-Venise had on new earrings, sufficiently showy to arouse envy in her housemates, tears in Trinchen – which earned her a slap from the Countess – and speculation in January about where ‘Lord Montague’ had acquired the money needed to come to New Orleans, let alone to maintain the open-handedness necessary to convince the local planters that he was a nobleman and not a card sharp.

If Frank Stubbs did manage to marry thirteen hundred acres of cotton at thirty-seven cents a pound, the investment would be well worth a few lies or a scratched face. But where had he gotten the money to introduce himself into French society in the first place? And did he actually think that the Deschampses and their relations the Ulloas, the Verrons, the Rochers, and Duplessises – both in New Orleans and in Natchitoches Parish – would countenance such a match without checking his bona fides? This wasn’t like Quennell impressing Jacob Schurtz and Jacob Schurtz alone.

Was poor Mademoiselle Deschamps that smitten?

At the close of the evening three friends of Elspie’s, musicians who played the far less elegant bucket-shops on the fringe of the Swamp, appeared at the back door and walked with January back to the French Town, picking an elusive course through half-cleared lots piled with building materials and streets that were little more than muddied tracks between walls of trees. More than once they stopped to let a half-seen flash of gleaming of scales pass by and saw, in the thin moonlight, the glint of an alligator’s eyes.

‘You wait for us tomorrow night, friend,’ cautioned the tallest of the three – Preacher – when they reached the dark house on Rue Esplanade. ‘Elspie say it was her talkin’ too free got this Englishman a hard-on for you, an’ you knows no buckra gonna be put off just ’cause you knocked him over once. He be back with some friends. You need to watch yourself.’

Since no member of the Watch had come to the Countess’s last night to discuss the temerity of black men striking white ones in defense of their own lives, the next morning January went to the Cabildo.

Shaw said, ‘Maestro.’ Though the watch room was more populated than its usual wont, owing to the nearness of the election, at least it wasn’t crowded with constituents and prospective officeholders, and the Lieutenant had his desk back. As January crossed to it, he saw Viscount Foxford seated next to it on a broken-down cane-bottom chair, and with him, not only Shaw – looking more like a raw-boned yellow wolf than ever – and the slouched and shabby Mr Droudge, but a stout gentleman in a gray coat, shiny with wear, and a pair of much-stained checked trousers.

‘My attorney, Mr Chaffinch,’ said the young man in introduction, and Chaffinch looked down his bulbous, broken-veined nose at January – though he stood some eight inches shorter – and muttered in plummy Oxonian accents, ‘Mmmrm – just so.’

Droudge also regarded January with fish-eyed distaste and turned back to his employer without a word. ‘You were saying, My Lord?’

Foxford looked hesitant –
good manners or worry about how much I might know?
– then, with an apologetic glance at January, returned to what was plainly an account of the previous Thursday night: ‘I don’t know the city and haven’t the slightest idea where I walked . . .’

The lawyer smelled of liquor and unclean linen from the other side of the desk. January’s glance went protestingly from Shaw to the fidgeting hands and red-veined nose –
he CAN’T be the best they could do!
– and back. Now and then Chaffinch rumbled, ‘Just so, just so,’ or once, ‘Hrmm, hrmm, quite,’ but made no attempt to take notes. Nor did he find anything amiss in the inconsistencies of his client’s story. Foxford, for his part, kept glancing at Droudge worriedly, as if unsure of the lawyer’s competence but unwilling to press the matter for fear of getting another attorney who
would
ask him where he’d really been . . .

‘Well, well. I’m sure something can be made of that,’ Chaffinch said at last and started to fish in his pockets for something – probably a bottle. ‘Nothing to worry about, Your Lordship. Man’s innocent until proven guilty, you know, even in the United States, and quite simply they have nothing on you.’

‘There,’ said Droudge triumphantly. ‘It’s as I said.’

Only a lifetime of hard-learned lessons about what black men were and were not permitted to say to white ones closed January’s mouth, but Shaw had no such compunction. ‘Well, that ain’t entirely true, Mr Chaffinch, this bein’ Louisiana an’ all. We go by the Code Napoleon hereabouts.’

‘Heavens, man, don’t you think I know that?’ The lawyer flushed an alarming color as he heaved himself to his feet. ‘I’ve practiced in this state longer than
you’ve
worn shoes, I daresay! But certain principles of justice are inalterable, sir! Just because a man cannot prove himself
alibi
means nothing.’

‘Indeed,’ added Droudge, folding pale, clammy hands on his knee. ‘We should be a good deal more concerned if His Lordship
had
produced a detailed explanation of a simple walk on a moonless night in a strange city!’ He widened a stained horror of a smile. ‘They’re only trying to frighten you, My Lord, into paying some outrageous sum, I daresay, once you’ve been in jail long enough . . .’

‘I assure you,’ declared Chaffinch, ‘that they cannot hang Your Lordship.’ He turned defiantly back to Foxford and executed a bow that made his corsets creak. ‘You have nothing to fear. And you, sir –’ he stabbed an accusing finger at Shaw – ‘I will not have you and the Jacobin ruffians who run the City Watch attempting to intimidate His Lordship. I am not without influence in this city. I will return tomorrow, Your Lordship.’ He bowed to Foxford again. ‘You let me know, if these – these
Frenchmen
and their myrmidons try to trick you into a confession of being anything but a simple visitor, minding his own business.’

He glared at Shaw, as he stood, like a grubby Sancho Panza, beside the tall, stooped form of Droudge. Foxford looked as if he were about to make some protest – or maybe just put in a request that on their next visit they bring him some food – but decided against it. Shaw put his hand under the young man’s arm and led him back into the yard. Quietly, January followed.

As if he read January’s thoughts, the Viscount said, rather wistfully, ‘Mr Droudge assures me that the man is far more reliable than he looks.’

January had to force himself not to remark that Mr Chaffinch could hardly be
less
reliable than he looked. He suspected that, besides being English, the man had been hired because he was cheap, and also available without a great deal of trouble and search.

‘Besides, he’s quite right. They
can’t
hang me because I didn’t do anything. I was nowhere near the hotel. Anyone will tell the jury that Patrick was like a father to me! More than a father . . .’ His voice grew suddenly quiet, and they stopped at the foot of the steps that led up to the cells. ‘I barely remember mine.’ His hesitant glance made January remember that this boy was scarcely into his twenties. The age his own son might be, he thought, had he wed and settled in New Orleans rather than taken ship for Paris, that summer of 1817.