Frog Music (35 page)

“One final point that troubles me, Miss Beunon,” says Coroner Swan. “You told Detective Bohen that you were crouched down, untying a gaiter, just when, outside the window, the murderer was aiming the gun?”

She bristles;
crouched down
, that sounds deliberate, surreptitious. Could he be implying that she was in on the plot? “I didn’t know, did I?” As if Blanche’s body could have been expected to feel the danger coming. People have no idea of the things that don’t happen to them—the lives they’re not living, the deaths stalking them—and thank Christ for that. Hard enough to get through each day without glimpsing all the hovering possibilities, like insects thickening the air.

“Does it not strike you as more than a little coincidental?”

Blanche shrugs rudely. Coincidences happen all the time. Fate touches one fingertip to the spinning top and knocks it over. What was it but fate, that hot night on Kearny Street, that made Jenny crash her high-wheeler into Blanche out of all the hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco?

But Swan’s still brooding. “Let’s consider the statistical probability of your just so happening to bend over at the very moment the assassin pulled the trigger. You dipped out of the line of fire, with the consequence that the eight bullets went right over you, within inches of your body.”

What does he want Blanche to say? That she’s sorry she’s alive?

“It strains credulity,” mutters Swan. “That’s all.”

She waits. Oh, he means she can get down?

“No more witnesses,” declares the clerk as Blanche steps into the crowd.

That’s it? But nobody’s jumped up with the missing pieces of the puzzle, Blanche thinks, bereft.

The waiting’s hard to bear. The audience members shuffle, chat, eat nuts, sip from little flasks.

Then a surge as the jury files back into the airless room. Do these men’s faces bear the righteous expression of Americans who’ve determined to send a pair of Frogs to the gallows? Blanche can’t read them at all.

The foreman is hoarse with nerves but still seems to relish his moment in the limelight. “We find that the deceased came to her death by violence, by gunshot wounds specifically—” He clears his throat.

She wishes he’d get on with it.

“—at the hands of persons unknown to the jury.”

Blanche almost groans. Is that old news all this rigmarole of an inquest has come up with?

“But we further find that, in the opinion of this jury, the evidence strongly points to Arthur Deneve and Ernest Girard as principals or accessories to the crime of murder.”

Murmurs of excitement in court.

Ah, now, this is more like it, this might do the trick.
Principals or accessories:
that has a serious ring to it. Is that enough to drag Arthur back from wherever he’s run to? France, even? And Ernest, locked up in a police cell. They’ll hold him now till they’ve squeezed enough evidence out of him. Surely he’ll pay in some measure for those eight bullets?

“Thank you, gentlemen,” says Swan. If he’s disappointed that the jury didn’t reach any more definite conclusion, he clearly believes it would be improper to show it. “Funeral to follow at two p.m. sharp.”

Blanche stumbles out with the crowd.

Her stomach growls, startling her. She hasn’t eaten today. Strange, how the petty needs continue to clamor in the middle of serious ones.

Detective Bohen stands on the sidewalk outside Gray’s, holding forth to newspapermen. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say the rate of bloodshed has
doubled
during this unseasonable heat, although—”

He’s interrupted. “What does it cost to hire a killer in this City, sir?”

“From two hundred up to a thousand dollars, according to our sources,” says Bohen.

“Have you received offers of aid of a clairvoyant nature?”

“Unsolicited offers, yes, as usual, but—”

“Mr. Bohen?” Blanche calls.

He glances at her.

She needs to know. “
Principals or accessories:
Is that enough?”

He frowns.

The newsmen scribble in their notebooks and smirk at Blanche.

Bohen draws her aside, barely touching her elbow. “Miss Beunon—” The reporters float a little closer. “Gentlemen,” he barks over his shoulder at them, then leads Blanche a few steps away.

“Is the verdict enough to hang Girard, at least?” she hisses.

“
Persons unknown
is the pertinent phrase.”

“But the jury—”

“Only a coroner’s jury, and all they have is a hunch. It may be a hunch on which I look with some sympathy, but it’s no more than that.”

“But the evidence says—it
points
to the two of them, that’s what the foreman said,” says Blanche, hearing herself whine.

“A criminal case requires more than
pointing
, Miss Beunon,” he snaps. “I’ve heard no proof of either Deneve or Girard traveling to San Miguel Station on Thursday or inducing someone else to do so.”

Her mind is spinning with frustration. “Well, can’t you interrogate Ernest—tell him it’ll be him or Arthur who’ll pay for this, come down on him hard—”

“I can only imagine what kind of methods are used in Parisian police stations,” says Bohen coldly, “and occasionally I do envy your
gendarmes
the free rein they’re given. It is highly inconvenient that our citizens have the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.”

She grits her teeth. These smug Americans and their rights. “I just mean, shouldn’t a prisoner be made to tell all he knows?”

“This morning, Girard told all he needed to tell, which was that he spent Thursday evening in the lodgings he shares with one Madeleine George. A fact that Miss George promptly confirmed, leaving us with no further justification to hold him.”

Blanche blinks. Madeleine? That
salope!
“But a woman would always lie for her man.”

“There were other witnesses, acquaintances who visited the pair that evening.”

She almost snarls. “Well, even if that’s true, Ernest could have hired some hoodlum—”

“So could anyone, Miss Beunon—so could you, for that matter—but there’s no proof.”

She might take offense at that, but something’s stuck in her head, something the man said a minute ago.
No further justification to hold him
. “You ain’t going to let Ernest go yet?”

“As a matter of fact, he was released some hours ago.”

The cry that comes out of her mouth sounds like it’s made by some small animal seized by a hawk.

The detective’s face creases with annoyance. “These things take time. Slowly but surely, with a rigorous application of logic—”

Blanche stumbles away from him without another word.

“Miss Beunon?” Now it’s Cartwright of the
Chronicle
at her elbow.

She shakes the reporter off. “You told me half an hour ago that Ernest was in jail, but they’ve already let him out!”

“Is that so?” He grimaces. “Look, miss, I’m doing my best.”

“Doing your best to sell fish wrap.”

“I hope boosting sales of the
Chronicle
’s not incompatible with striving for justice—”

“You’re all bull,” she cuts in. “Inventing Jenny’s last words! ‘Adieu, I follow my sister …’”

“If I leave anything out, the editor fills it in,” says Cartwright, sheepish. “I’m afraid what we term
the news
is something of a crazy quilt of fact and fiction.”

But Blanche has turned away, quickly leaving the newsman behind.

There’s that monstrosity of an organ at the corner, the automata still ducking and waving to “The Ride of the Valkyries.” Blanche goes the other way to escape its din.

What has she done?

P’tit’s slipped through her fingers one last time.

She decided to be clever today, didn’t she, to put on a dazzling turn, defy Ernest’s warnings, laugh him to scorn while he was in the lockup. When all morning he’s been walking the streets, a free man. Standing in the crowd at Gray’s, perhaps, face obscured under a tilted hat, listening to every rash word escaping from Blanche’s mouth? Whether Ernest heard her in person or whether he’s going to read it in the papers later, he’ll come to the same conclusion: that bitch has played her last card.

VII
BANG AWAY

Her first morning in San Miguel Station, Wednesday, the thirteenth of September, Blanche wakes to the sight of Jenny in a pair of blue overalls riveted together with what look like beads of brass. “What in the world have you got on?”

“Only cost me two bucks,” says Jenny, grinning over her shoulder as she adjusts her belt, “and the fellow swore they’ll outlive me.”

“Just don’t ever wear them into the City or you’ll start a riot.”

Jenny slides her Colt out from under her side of the mattress.

“I thought you were going frogging at the pond,” says Blanche.

“It’s gone green in the heat. Frogs turn up their noses at scum.”

“I didn’t know they had noses.”

Jenny grins, pulling a box of cartridges out of her satchel.

“So what are you planning to hunt instead?” Blanche asks.

A guffaw. “Who goes hunting with a revolver?”

“I never claimed to know or care about guns,” snaps Blanche.

“Thought I’d give the kids some target practice,” Jenny explains.

When Blanche finally crawls out of bed, half an hour later, and emerges from the Eight Mile House in a wrapper, she finds the three younger McNamaras in a knot around Jenny.

“You’re aiming high,” Jenny’s telling John Jr.

“Am not.” The boy fires again and misses the bale of straw.

“You ain’t flinching, at least.”

Another bang; straw puffs at the very corner of the bale. “Dang it!”

Blanche is charmed by the childish euphemism that the twelve-year-old mumbles as if it’s a serious cuss.

“Accuracy’s a sight harder with a handgun,” Jenny comforts him. “Care to show Miss Blanche what you can do with your old varmint gun instead? I once saw this boy hit a can at thirty yards,” she tells Blanche.

Blanche widens her eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

John Jr. blushes as red as he might if Blanche rubbed up against him. She didn’t mean to flirt, exactly; it’s just her stock-in-trade.

“Go get it,” Jenny tells the boy.

“Dadda sold the varmint gun, a month back,” he mutters, squinting at the target as he lifts the revolver again. This time, the bale thuds and sends up a cough of dust.

“Now that’s the ticket,” murmurs Blanche.

John Jr. doesn’t look at her, but he’s flushed to the tips of his ears, and she can’t help enjoying this little exercise of her powers.

Jeremiah’s whining about it being his turn.

“I’ll hold it with you,” says his sister Kate.

“No.”

“Otherwise you’ll shoot your foot off, you know you will.”

“All by self!”

Blanche thinks of P’tit. Of all the dangers he could be getting into wherever he may be.

The squabbling brings Ellen McNamara out and breaks up the lesson. With a few martyred sighs—“Breakfast’s cleared away hours ago”—she agrees to toast a couple pieces of bread while Blanche is dressing.

Looking out through the dust-caked window of the saloon a quarter of an hour later, Blanche spots Jenny unhitching the horse from the buggy that has
Marshall’s
stenciled on the side. She runs out, still chewing her toast. “Where are you off to?” It comes out more shrill than she meant it to.

“There’s a creek up on Sweeney Ridge where I always catch a sackful,” says Jenny, nodding toward the hills to the south. “Care to come along?”

Blanche hesitates, looks down at her polka-dot skirt. She doesn’t want to be stuck at the Eight Mile House on her own all day, but …

“Don’t let all your froufrou prevent you. John Jr. can lend you a pair of overalls.”

“Not on your life.”

But Blanche goes back to the bedroom and removes her bustle, at least, and swaps her white mules for a pair of flattish boots. She borrows the boy’s golden-brown pony. Offers to rent her, that is, but John Jr. stammers something about any friend of Jenny’s being a friend of his. Blanche rewards him with her silkiest smile.

“Saddle slipping on you?” Jenny asks when they’ve been riding a few minutes.

“I feel as if I’m wallowing in a basket,” complains Blanche.

“Ah, you must have ridden English-style at your circus.”

“French-style,” Blanche corrects her.

“Well, better learn to ride Western or this poor palomino’s going to flick you off into the nearest gulch,” says Jenny. “Leave her mouth alone, for starters.”

“Then how’s she going to know who’s boss?”

“Let her have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I say, so long as she gets you up the hill.”

Blanche rolls her eyes but transfers both reins to her left hand and leaves them slack, like Jenny does. And John’s pony does seem to know what she’s doing; she must have been up this way before.

They skirt around dairy farms, going past a mountain that Jenny says is named San Bruno. “So how about a few tricks, now the pony’s used to you?”

Blanche glances sideways at her, incredulous.

“Go on, I’ve never known a genuine equestrienne.”

“A genuine
putain
, these days.”

Jenny gives her a look so fierce that Blanche yanks on the bridle without meaning to, making the palomino shake her creamy head furiously. “What?” Blanche demands. “Why be squeamish about the word?”

“You’re more than that,” Jenny insists. “Don’t let those sons of bitches reduce you to that.”

Blanche is startled.

“The way you dance, the goddamn artistry of it—there’s not a one can touch you.”

Blanche decides to be droll. “They can afterward, if they pay extra,” she mutters.

Jenny ignores that.

They ride on for a minute. Something’s puzzling Blanche. “You’ve never seen me dance.”

“Ain’t I, though?”

Blanche stares at her. “At the House of Mirrors?” It’s never occurred to her to scan the faces under the top hats and bowlers or wonder if all the audience is male. And why would it matter, exactly? she asks herself in some confusion. Hard to explain the prickling feeling it gives her to know Jenny was among the watchers one time. Jenny, slouched on one of the Grand Saloon’s red velvet chairs with her hat tipped over her eyes, unnoticed, because everyone was ogling the little festooned stage where Blanche la Danseuse was giving it her all. “What took you there?”