‘That’s a good deal of trouble,’ January observed gently, ‘on behalf of a boy you knew as a child, and a man you haven’t seen for seventeen years.’
‘The boy’s mother was . . . very good to me.’ Hannibal turned the empty cup in his hands. ‘They both were. Patrick . . .’ He sighed, a sound like the rasp of a saw. ‘Foxford wouldn’t have done it.’
January took the cup from him and walked to the coffee stand where Aunt Zozo, in her red-striped yellow tignon, stood like a benign witch in the clouds of charcoal smoke from the fire beneath her pot. ‘Has there been word, anything, of Rameses?’ the marchande asked, and her eyes filled with pity when January shook his head. As he turned back toward the table she handed him a couple of pralines – lagniappe. Like Railspike, she had a soft spot for Hannibal.
‘The Consul will surely have something to say—’ Hannibal began, when January sat down again.
‘Obviously,’ January replied. ‘But since he hasn’t, I assume that Shaw turned up something damning.’
‘Have you seen Shaw?’ Hannibal glanced across the Place d’Armes, where the Cabildo’s white stucco shimmered palely through the rain.
‘I tried on my way here; he was out. I shall try again –’ he drew from his pocket the folded note that had arrived at his house an hour ago, which was quick work considering it was the answer to one he’d penned in the small hours to be taken out to Milneburgh by his nephew on the first steam-train – ‘when I’ve made inquiries about the part played in all this business by Lord Montague Blessinghurst.’
‘Who?’
‘The gentleman – I believe – who came so close to being called out by young Foxford at Trulove’s ball, Monday night. And the man I suspect your friend was looking for, Thursday night.’
Hannibal looked up sharply.
‘He found him, and they quarrelled – violently, according to Trinchen at the Countess’s. I’m hoping that Madeleine Mayerling –’ he named a former pupil, of impeccable French Creole family – ‘can tell us what it was about. She was at Trulove’s on Monday night, and if she didn’t actually witness Blessinghurst’s original altercation with Foxford, she’s had almost a week to hear the details from everyone who did.’
‘Trust the Creole ladies to maintain an intelligence system that the French Foreign Service would envy. Can you get to Milneburgh and back before the Countess opens her doors? The lady is strict about employees who show up late.’
For answer, January handed his friend the note:
Saturday 8 October, 1836
My dear Mr J,
You must not think of trying to come out here, and perhaps missing the last train back. As Augustus informs me that you are working this summer for the notorious Countess Mazzini, in return for later information about EVERYONE of my acquaintance who has passed through her doors, and the disgraceful details of all that transpires in her house, I will be at home on Rue Royale this afternoon at three. I trust the summer finds you and your family well?
Yours,
M.M.
The downpour had lightened to fleeting squalls by the time January and Hannibal reached what had been the town-house of the Trepagier family, at the quiet end of Rue Royale. In an hour the rocks would be burning, as the saying was: the sun drawing up as steam those silver-gray lakes that lay in the streets; the air unbreathable, and ten times worse than before. The two men walked in silence, having called briefly at the Cabildo and been informed by the desk sergeant that firstly, Lieutenant Shaw was still out dealing with a bar-fight of near-riot proportions on Tchapitoulas Street near the wharves, and secondly – in irritated tones – that the British consul had no business interfering with American justice in a case when the murderer had been found to have inherited his victim’s entire fortune, by the terms of the victim’s will.
‘I suppose I should be pleased that Aunt Elodie’s fortune has returned to the family at last,’ sighed Hannibal, after silently digesting this information as they walked. ‘And I’m sure Patrick meant it for the best. Yet there is a time to every season under heaven, and this donation does seem to be rather unfortunately timed.’
‘I wonder if the boy knew of the will.’
‘I wonder if any jury will believe him if he says he didn’t. Somebody in the party obviously did.’
January said, ‘Hmm.’
The tall stucco town-house, dilapidated after the death of the spendthrift and abusive Arnaud Trepagier, had been recently repainted, January noted approvingly, and every window sparkled. The sale of the Trepagier plantation lands to a spur of the Milneburgh steam-train line had clearly been profitable. It had, among other things, enabled the young widow Trepagier to marry her husband’s fencing master, to the gratification of everyone except the widow’s disapproving aunts.
‘Why this interest in the murder of a traveling Irishman?’ inquired Augustus Mayerling, emerging from the rear of the house as January and Hannibal made their way into the courtyard, past the small carriage that stood in the porte cochère. ‘If there were a question of how your friend Ramilles died—’
‘M’sieu Derryhick was a friend of Hannibal.’ January glanced at the fiddler, who, behind a mask of persiflage, had managed to say very little about either Viscount Foxford or Patrick Derryhick on the walk from the market. ‘As was the Viscount’s father. The boy was arrested this morning, I understand—’
‘And I understand the uncle promptly went to Mayor Prieur’s office and made a complete fool of himself, demanding his nephew’s release.’ Mayerling paused on his way through the shaded loggia at the back of the house, raised colorless brows. ‘On the grounds that he is a member of the British aristocracy – not an argument calculated to impress either a French judge, or an American one who wishes his political friends to be re-elected next month.’
They ascended the outside stairway in silence. On the upstairs gallery, Madeleine Mayerling rose to greet them, her dark beauty and ivory complexion a warm contrast to her husband’s slim Teutonic pallor.
‘M’sieu Janvier.’ Madame Mayerling clasped January’s hand, which despite the heat was properly gloved for a visit to a white lady. ‘M’sieu Sefton. This concerns the quarrel at Madame Trulove’s ball, you said?’
‘So I believe.’ At her gesture, January took one of the wooden gallery chairs. A servant emerged from the house, bearing a tray of lemonade. Another of those intricate unspoken rules, reflected January: second nature to a man of color in America, but – once he had turned back to look behind him from the freer air of Paris – a source of fascination. Just who could sit down and drink with whom? The rules shifted like a cat’s cradle depending on whether he, a black man, had arrived in company with the white Hannibal; where the meeting and drinking took place; how he was dressed and whether it was winter – the social season, during which it might be seen that the Mayerlings would sit down and drink with a black man – or the summer, when it would be a matter of mere servant rumor. Had his skin been the lovely bronze of his mulatto mother’s, instead of his slave father’s beau noir lustré, as the dealers said, the rules would have been different still, as they would have had he not been attired in coat, vest, and gloves, or had he been a woman (dark or bright?) rather than a man.
It was not something you could understand, January suspected, unless you’d grown up free colored – and the son of slaves – in New Orleans.
‘It might be happenstance,’ he went on, his big hand wrapped lightly around the stem of his glass. ‘But I don’t think it is. Patrick Derryhick was last seen alive when he stormed back into the Hotel Iberville at ten thirty, Thursday evening, after a violent quarrel – I am told – with another Englishman named Lord Montague Blessinghurst.’
‘Mon Dieu!’ Madeleine Mayerling glanced over her shoulder at her husband. ‘That was the man—’
‘Indeed.’ Both returned their gazes to January. The sword-master cocked his narrow, bird-like head. ‘You behold us agog.’
‘What happened at Trulove’s?’
; ‘Well, she knew them both.’ Madeleine set her glass down, folded her hands on her sprig-muslin lap. ‘That was abundantly clear.’
‘Who knew them both?’
‘Isobel Deschamps.’
It was January’s turn to raise his brows. ‘Celestine Deschamps’s daughter?’ Like Hannibal yesterday, he experienced a momentary flash of wonder and regret – where ARE the snows of yesteryear? – that the grave and sweet-faced French Creole damsel he had tutored in piano was already old enough to be causing near-duels at birthday balls in Milneburgh. Yet the autumn that he’d taken that honey-haired schoolgirl through Mozart marches and light-footed Austrian waltz-tunes, she was already bubbling with plans for her debut: I have a fitting for my dress for the Mayor’s Ball; I must go with Maman to buy gloves to go with my slippers . . . In time the piano lessons had been discontinued, as Celestine Deschamps – just emerged from full mourning for her husband – shepherded the girl to dancing masters and corsetières in preparation for her introduction to adult society.
That was the year, January recalled, that the government of the United States had finally cleared the Red River in the north-west of the state for steamboat navigation, quintupling the value of the Deschamps plantations in Natchitoches Parish and transforming the pretty young widow and her daughters from modestly well-to-do to outright rich overnight.
Of course, it was expected that Isobel would marry well.
‘She has only just returned from Paris,’ went on Madame Mayerling. ‘So it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that she encountered both of them there. The Viscount and Lord Montague, I mean.’ Something of January’s own thoughts must have snagged in her mind, for her dark brows puckered as she heard her own words.
‘Not beyond the realm of possibility, no,’ January said, answering her expression. ‘But what is the probability that two men she knew – and knew well enough to have them fight over her – would both come to New Orleans during the hot season, when even the Devil is still away on vacation?’
There was a little silence, broken only by the rising thrum of cicadas in the courtyard plane-tree with the cessation of the rain, and the voice of a servant-woman in the kitchen downstairs.
‘Did you see what took place?’
‘Oh, yes. I was speaking with her only moments before.’ A shadow of remembered anger flickered through the young woman’s eyes. ‘As to what happened . . . She turned her head, said, “Oh, peste!” and begged my pardon and tried to get out of the room. You know how crowded it was that night. Before she could reach the door, Blessinghurst stepped in front of her and took her by the hands, the way a man does who thinks he is entitled to do so. Isobel tried to get free, but he was very earnest, like a man in love . . . Only, a man who truly loves will not do such a thing to a girl at a ball, when she must either stand still and let him talk, or make a scene in public.’
‘And Foxford broke in?’
Madame Mayerling nodded decisively. ‘I was on my way to do so, but he was before me. He said something like, “Sir, it must have escaped your notice that this young lady was on the way from the room.”’ A born mimic, she captured not only the accent of Foxford’s perfect public-school English, but also the stiff posture of an offended scion of the aristocracy. ‘Isobel tried to pull her hands away, and Blessinghurst would not release them, and that was not at all how he acted to the other ladies that evening, young or otherwise. He made some slighting answer to the boy and tried to draw Isobel aside . . .’
She frowned again, putting events into order as if sorting out a hand of cards. ‘And do you know, after that first instant Isobel did not look at young Foxford. She looked away, like this . . .’
Not the gesture of an eighteen-year-old girl embarrassed at a scene between gentlemen. It was, January thought, almost like a flinch of fear.
‘She said, “Gerry, no.”’
‘She called him Gerry?’
‘Even so. Foxford – only it was not until later that my Aunt Clothilde told me his title – put his hand on Blessinghurst’s arm, and in turning to meet him Blessinghurst let Isobel go, and I got her out of the room, in spite of the crowd.’ January guessed that, as a well-off young matron, Madeleine Mayerling would have far less diffidence about pushing her way to the door than a shy girl in her third season.
‘In the lobby I asked her if I should fetch her mother. She was shaking all over and ashen with distress. Now, I would not put it past Celestine Deschamps to push this British Lord’s addresses at her later – depending on how rich he turns out to be – but if there was a scene brewing in the ballroom she would, of course, get her out of there right away.’
‘So you knew Blessinghurst is a lord?’
‘Oh, yes. He’d left cards on everyone in town about a week before that, and Augustus introduced us earlier that evening. He’d had a lesson with him already at the salle d’epée. Everyone was saying how exquisite his manners were, and half a dozen of my aunts’ friends are pursuing him for their daughters. I found him . . .’ She fished momentarily for the right word. ‘I found him obsequious, myself. But men often are when they’re on the catch for heiresses.’
January nodded, recalling Martin Quennell gamely sacrificing a hundred dollars’ worth of clothes to the pursuit.
‘He always seems to have a great deal of money—’
‘He wins a lot of that in the gambling-rooms,’ remarked Augustus.
‘Yes, well, so do you, liebling.’ She reached up to touch his hand. ‘It was, as I said, the only time I saw him behave in a manner less than perfectly correct.’
Hannibal spoke up. ‘Did he say why he was in New Orleans at this season?’
‘Traveling for his health, he said. Which, when one thinks about it, is the last thing one is likely to find in New Orleans before the first frost.’ She tilted the lemonade pitcher, topping up their glasses, and offered the plate of teacakes. January took one, knowing it would be a long night at the Countess’s. Hannibal shook his head.
‘Would you do me a favor, Madame?’ asked January, after a time of thought. ‘Might I prevail on you to call on Mademoiselle Deschamps, and learn from her, if you can, why it is that she tried to flee Lord Montague on sight, and how she comes to call young Foxford by his Christian name?’
‘Prevail upon me?’ The velvety brown eyes sparkled with pleasure. ‘My dear M’sieu, after what you have told me of murders and intrigues, you would have to confine me to keep me from it!’
January laughed. ‘I kiss your hands and feet, Madame, with your husband’s kind permission. Was Derryhick there that night, by the way? Do you know?’
Madeleine and Augustus exchanged glances, questioning and shrugging. If Monday had been the Foxford party’s first evening in New Orleans, January reflected, neither would have known who Derryhick was, as they’d known Blessinghurst. And a plain ‘Mister’, be he ever so wealthy with mis-inherited gains, would not catch gossip’s attention the way even an impoverished Viscount would. Mayerling said, ‘Certainly, no one stood out among those who drew Foxford away from Lord Montague, as a traveling companion would do. The man may have been in the hotel’s gambling room and heard nothing of the matter.’
‘I imagine if he had been present at all,’ said Hannibal, ‘I would have seen him, and I didn’t. And that,’ he added, almost to himself, ‘is probably just as well.’
EIGHT
Even in the hot season, Saturday night was the liveliest of the week at the Countess’s. Little J scurried to and from the kitchen with bottles of expensive champagne for the men and glasses for the girls, adeptly switching the wine that the men had poured out for their inamoratas pro tem with identical glasses of apple juice, diluted with soda water to the same color. A gentlemen might think he wanted to share champagne (at three times its market value) with the girl of his choice, but January knew why the deception was necessary. ‘Trust me,’ he later explained to Rose, ‘you don’t want to see any of those girls actually drunk.’
January played, watched, and
listened without seeming to, and when his banker, Hubert Granville – for whom he had done a little investigating at the beginning of summer – glanced askance at him from between the lovely Sybilla’s breasts, he only beamed a greeting of wordless friendliness and went back to ‘The Lad With His Sidelocks Curled’. If whorehouse etiquette forbade the piano player from recognizing any of the men who came to Countess Mazzini’s to gamble, fornicate, and shout at each other about the annexation of Texas in an atmosphere of cheap patchouli and cigar smoke, in return it prevented any white man from officially taking notice of who was providing the music.
Neither Martin Quennell nor the wealthy and ill-mannered Mr Schurtz put in an appearance that night. Young Mr Foxy Red Dominic Lloyd came in late and very drunk, and proceeded to get drunker – an expensive proposition at the Countess’s.
‘Do I judge correctly that Mr Lloyd’s courtship of Miss Schurtz’s dowry has been derailed by a mere bank clerk?’ January asked Hannibal later, when he emerged at the end of a very long evening to find the fiddler on the back steps, trading after-hours jokes in German with Trinchen and Nenchen.
After he had kissed both girls goodnight amid compliments and snatches of Goethe’s more romantic endeavors – ‘kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn’ – he untied one of Nenchen’s pink-striped ribbons from around his neck and said, ‘Bank clerk? According to the lovely Nenchen, Mr Quennell is an entrepreneur who has used his position at the Mississippi and Balize to purchase town lots out beyond Dryades Street . . . which have tripled in value since that area became part of the Second Municipality in March.’
‘Using what for money, I wonder?’
‘Well you may. Goodnight, goodnight, beautiful ladies,’ he added, as Auntie Saba and her children came down the back steps, and Hughie-Boy – a huge hook-nosed ruffian who slept in a little room beneath the stairs – locked up the door behind them. ‘Dusky like night, but night with all her stars . . .’
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