"She's a Creole lady." There was ironic bitterness in January's voice. "It's the custom of the country. Expecting her to see any connection is like thinking my mother's going to stop acting like my mother. Or that you're going to sit down at this table with me. Sir."
A slow smile spread across the Kaintuck's unshaven face, the gray eyes twinkling with amusement. "I suppose you're right about that." He stepped away from the brick arcade for a moment and spat in the general direction of the gutter. January hoped for the sake of peace in the town that the man's aim was better with firearms.
"We found the boardin' house on the Esplanade where Claud Trepagier stayed for the week before he showed up at the Trepagier town house claimin' to have just stepped off a steamboat. Everythin' was there: that necklace and letters from McGinty dating back about three weeks after Arnaud's death."
"I suppose it took about three weeks for McGinty to realize that he couldn't pressure or badger Madame Trepagier into marrying him."
"That'd be my guess, though of course McGinty wouldn't say so. He did say there was some hurry-up about it, on account of them cousins of her'n offerin' marriage theirselves. The woman who runs the boardin' house says she remembers Claud goin' out that Thursday night in that green Turk costume, and she remembers McGinty comin' by to see him a couple times. The girl who works in the kitchen found this, stuffed in the garbage-bin one day that week. She don't recollect what day."
From his pocket he produced a long scarf or sash of orange-and-green silk, tasseled at the ends and dabbed and blotted with blood.
"The sash he was wearing at the Mardi Gras ball itself was purple," said January slowly. "I remember thinking it didn't match. It was a later replacement- probably part of McGinty's pirate costume."
"It don't prove anythin', of course-that blood coulda come from a dog or a chicken or wherever-but it gave Mister Crozat somethin' to show that mother of the murdered girl-and Lord, didn't she carry on! Not that I blame her. It was her only daughter, her flesh and blood."
January turned his coffee cup in his hands, remembering the way Angelique's brothers had turned their faces from their mother at the funeral. Remembering what Hannibal had said, and his mother.
Shaw went on after a thoughtful moment, "But she carried on a damn sight worse when Captain
Tremouille broke the news to her that necklace was goin' back to Madame Trepagier, because it hadn't even been rightfully Trepagier's to give away in the first place. Now that was grief."
A woman with a basket on her head walked by along the Rue du Levee, singing about gingerbread. January could see she wore a thong about her ankle, with a blue bead and a couple of brass bells. Under boot and sock he still wore the one Olympe had made him. Whether it had gotten him safe out of Bayou Chien Mort he wasn't sure, but he certainly hadn't been beaten up since.
"I don't know why I didn't see it earlier," he said slowly, as the Kentuckian folded the sash and restored it to the seemingly depthless pocket of his frayed green coat. "I knew it was Madame Trepagier's dress Angelique was wearing-she'd told me so-and my sister mentioned that she and Angelique also wore the same size dresses. Both women were dark-haired. Both had the same coloring."
"Well," said Shaw, "leavin' out the poor taste of the thing, it ain't that uncommon. You see lots of men who'll marry a woman looks just like their dead wives, or the men who'll always ask for a blonde or a tall girl or whatever in a parlor house. Trepagier prob'ly never gave it a thought, that barrin' the faces, his mistress looked pretty much exactly like his wife."
"Only one was colored," said January. "And if her mother hadn't resorted to blackmail, her death might never have been looked into at all." He glanced sidelong up at the tall man standing beside the table. "Did you ever find anything of the girl Sally?"
"On the subject of colored girls whose deaths don't get looked into, you mean?"
"Yes," said January. "That's what I mean."
The policeman rubbed his unshaven chin and cracked his knuckles with a noise audible several feet away. "I got a couple of the men the city hires to clean the gutters-not bein' able to spare any constables, you understand-and dragged around the bayous some. We found a woman's body about the right height in Bayou Gentilly two days ago, that looked like it'd been there since right around Mardi Gras, but what with the water and the crawfish there wasn't much face left on her. And I did check with Maspero's and over by Carmen and Ricardo and the other big dealers, and nobody answerin' McGinty's description had sold a black girl that age." He stepped away from the vicinity of the tables and spat into the gutter again. "I got word out to the dealers upriver, but myself, I think that was her. Mrs. Trepagier's cook Claire said as how Sally's fella was redheaded, but of course we can't use her testimony in a court of law."
January said ironically, "Of course not."
The cathedral bell called out across the Place des Armes; Rue du Lev6e was filling up. The last mists of the morning were burning off and the day was already turning hot. Most of the planters had left the city right after Easter, which had fallen early that year. Already the dark striped cane was head high in the fields, and Bella had put up the mosquito bars in Livia's house and the gar-conniere.
A gray-suited form jostling along the banquette paused for a fraction of a second, and looking up, January met the blue eyes of Xavier Peralta. The planter paused for a moment, midstride, then turned his face away and kept walking.
" 'Why, thank you, I'm just fine too,' " murmured Shaw. " 'What? No, it weren't no trouble to clear your son of murder, long as I was clearin' my ownself anyway, glad to do it, sir.' "
January covered his mouth with his hand, but could not smother his laughter. He finally managed to say, " 'Sugar mill? What sugar mill?' " He didn't know why he laughed. It was that, he supposed, or hate the
man- and all planters-and all whites-forever.
But his laughter was bitter. Maybe he would hate them anyway. He didn't know.
"Well, if you ever decide you do want to go back to Europe and be a doctor," said Shaw at length, "I suppose you could go to him and ask for passage. I don't think he'd thank you for it, though."
At the foot of the Place des Armes along the levee, queer in the livid, soot-dyed glare of the sun, boats were loading with cotton, wines, pineapples, silk, coffles of slaves, and Russian cigarettes. Bound upriver, or out for New York or Philadelphia, for Le Havre or Liverpool. The Boreas, the Aspasia, the Essex, and the Walter Scott. Bound for anywhere but New Orleans.
January thought about it as he walked home.
Two evenings later there was a knock at the door of Livia Levesque's cottage on Rue Burgundy, at the time when the oil lamps above the street were being lit.
Spring heat had settled on the city, and the air was thick with smudges of tobacco and lemon grass, burned to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Livia had spoken over dinner of renting lodgings out on the lake, as the Culvers were already doing and the parents of several others among January's pupils. The French doors were open to the street and to the yard behind the house, so that the rooms all breathed with the smell of that afternoon's light rain and the whiff of crawfish gumbo and red beans. January's shrunken class had taken their leave. In the weeks between Mardi Gras and Easter he'd acquired several new students, who would, he knew, be back in the fall, and one of them at least-a tiny boy named Narcisse Brez6-showed promise of real genius. After the students departed January remained in the parlor, playing the pieces that pleased him, Bach and Haydn and von Weber, letting the music roll from the instrument as dusk gathered in the little cottage and slowly, unwillingly, the day's heat withdrew. In time Hannibal appeared, waxen and shabby as usual-without saying a word about it, Livia had begun including him at her dinner table now that entertainments in the town were growing thin. He unpacked his violin and slipped into accompaniment, the riddle like a golden fish in the dark strong waters of the piano's greater voice: jigs and reels and sentimental ballads, and snatches of melody from the Montmartre cafes that had been popular in Paris two years ago. Dominique came in, and then Livia, simply sitting and listening as the evening deepened and the crickets began to cry.