Midnight Confessions

by Candice Proctor

  The older woman expelled her breath in a disdainful, very Gallic sound. “Pppuhhh. Because of a few flushed canals and drained gutters? As if that has anything to do with it.”

  Emmanuelle curled her hands around the railing at her side and somehow managed to keep quiet, for they’d had this argument more times than she could remember, and Marie Thérèse never changed her mind. About anything.

  “It’s pure self-interest, of course,” Marie Thérèse was saying, “this campaign of the Yankees to clean up the city. They know they would be the first to die.”

  Emmanuelle pushed away from the rail. “The first, but not the only ones.”

  Marie Thérèse lifted one thin shoulder in an elegant shrug. “The weak die.”

  It seemed a cold, calloused thing to say to a young woman who had watched first her mother, then her father die in separate epidemics less than five years apart. But then, Marie Thérèse had lost two of her own sons to the Yellow Jack, and a third to swamp fever.

  “Not only the weak,” said Emmanuelle, her voice husky with emotion.

  The game of horseshoes must be over. Dominic had run off, laughing, toward the stables behind the house, while Jean-Lambert was making his slow, careful way up the stairs to the gallery, his weight leaning heavily on the arm of his big mulatto slave, Baptiste.

  Marie Thérèse set aside the fan, the gold rings on her fingers clanging against the table’s iron rim. “Is it true,” she said, “what Dominic has been telling us? That you’ve had Yankees at the Hospital de Santerre because of this unpleasantness?”

  This unpleasantness. It took Emmanuelle a moment to realize that Marie Thérèse was referring to Henri Santerre’s murder. “One Yankee,” Emmanuelle said as Jean-Lambert reached the top of the steps. “General Butler’s provost marshal.”

  “It’s unlikely he’ll trouble you again,” said Jean-Lambert, his voice shaky as he paused to catch his breath. “What’s another dead Southerner to Ben Butler and his band of murderers and thieves?” With the big black man’s help, he eased down into one of the gallery’s whitewashed plantation rockers, only the quick spasm of his features betraying his pain. “Thank you, Baptiste,” he said quietly. Baptiste nodded, and moved off.

  “I don’t think this Major Cooper intends to let the matter slide,” said Emmanuelle, her voice oddly tight.

  With the slow deliberation that characterized his movements these days, the old man hooked his silver-headed cane over the rocker’s arm and fumbled in his pockets for his pipe and leather pouch. “Sees it as a matter of pride, does he?”

  Emmanuelle shook her head. “Not if you mean pride in the sense of vanity.”

  Jean-Lambert looked up from tamping the tobacco in his pipe, his startlingly blue eyes narrowing in quick understanding and what might have been amusement. Philippe had had eyes like that. So did Dominic. Viking eyes, Jean-Lambert liked to call them. “Ah. So he’s a man of honor, is he? He sees catching this killer as a matter of duty. Well, well, well.” He stuck the pipe in his mouth and clamped down on it with his teeth. “Interesting.”

  Emmanuelle said nothing, although she was beginning to think that Zach Cooper’s determination to catch this murderer went beyond the ordinary concept of duty. After all, the man was Butler’s provost marshal, which meant he was responsible not only for keeping the peace but also for overseeing everything from the confiscation and disposal of Rebel property to the cleaning of the streets and the feeding and housing of thousands of displaced Negroes and the city’s own growing population of poor. That he had come to the cemetery last night was understandable. That he was personally taking a part in the investigation of Henri Santerre’s death, was not.

  “Duty and honor?” scoffed Marie Thérèse. “A Yankee? I doubt it. If Henri hadn’t found such a ridiculously sensational way of getting himself murdered, no one would be giving the incident a second thought.”

  Jean-Lambert struck a match, but paused to eye his wife with the civil hostility that had characterized their partnership for as long as Emmanuelle had known them. “The man can hardly be held responsible for the manner of his death.”

  Marie Thérèse returned the cold stare. “Of course he can. The life he led, the people he knew—something he’d done must have contributed to what happened, to the way it happened.”

  Jean-Lambert sucked on his pipe, and said nothing.

  Marie Thérèse swung about in her chair to look up at Emmanuelle and say briskly, “You’ll be closing the hospital now, of course.”

  Emmanuelle shook her head. “No. As long as I can, I’ll keep it open.”

  Jean-Lambert nodded in quiet understanding, but Marie Thérèse let out her breath in another of those explosive, very French pppuhhhs. It had never sat well with her notions of propriety and respectability, for the wife of a de Beauvais to be working in a hospital. To be working outside the home at all.

  “I’m having another sewing meeting on Tuesday,” Marie Thérèse said now, her gaze still hard on Emmanuelle’s face, “to sew shirts for the Confederate prisoners being held on Ship Island. Will you be attending?”

  Every month, Marie Thérèse hosted one of these sewing get-togethers. Every month she invited Emmanuelle, and every month, Emmanuelle knew the harassed feeling that comes from disappointing the expectations of others. She swallowed a sigh. “I’ll try,” she said. “But with Henri gone, the work at the hospital is likely to become overwhelming.”

  “Then close it,” said Marie Thérèse.

  Emmanuelle set her jaw, and said nothing. Again.

  Jean-Lambert cleared his throat, filling the awkward silence. “The wake is tonight; had you heard?” He had his head bowed, his attention seemingly all for his pipe. “Will he be there, do you think? This Union major you were telling us about?”

  “Surely not,” said Marie Thérèse quickly. “To impose himself on mourners at such a time? Even a Yankee must have more manners than that.”

  Emmanuelle stared off across the garden, toward the stables, where high white clouds were beginning to gather in the pale blue afternoon sky. “He’ll be there.”

  The daylight was fading fast by the time Emmanuelle turned into the rue Conti, the hum of locusts in the hidden, high-walled gardens loud and ringing in the hot, still air. The afternoon rainstorm had swept in early, drenching the city not long after she left the house on Esplanade Avenue and returned to the hospital. Now, the skies had cleared again, so that a nearly full moon shone pale as a white disk from out of the dusky sky.

  Already she could hear the distant roar from the cabarets along the waterfront, for it was Saturday night and not even the war and occupation were enough to quiet the billiard halls and taverns and brothels of the Quarter. But the houses here on the rue Conti were quiet, the air filled with the scent of garlic sizzling in olive oil and the gentle clink of china as tables were set for supper, movements hushed behind shuttered windows. She had a sudden sense of how alone she was on this deserted street, and for a moment she felt a childlike fear of the dark creep up on her, a fear that made her feel contemptibly weak and vulnerable, and that persisted despite her efforts to brush it off. It was with relief that she reached the corner of Burgundy Street and saw the town house Henri Santerre had shared with his sister, Elise.

  It was a tall, narrow building, its living quarters on the second and third floors reached through the lamplit darkness of an arched carriageway and up a gracefully curving flight of stone steps. Inside, Emmanuelle found the rooms already crowded with whispering groups of shadowy men and women, the gaslights unlit because of the heat, the mirrors shrouded in black, the air hot and hazy with smoke from the crepe-draped branches of candles that flickered near the dead man’s head. She had to force herself to walk across the mat-covered floorboards to stand beside the cold still figure of Henri Santerre. She might be familiar with death, but being familiar with death and being familiar with murder were, she realized, two very different things.

  Henri Santerre had been laid out, as was the
custom, on a black-draped table placed near the front parlor windows, his hands folded above the heart. Yet as she stared down at him, the sweet scent of jasmine and carnations rose up to envelop her, and Emmanuelle knew a peculiar, scalp-tingling timeslip. Henri’s chest was as motionless as the table beneath him, the linen of his shirt faultlessly white and freshly pressed, the black silk of his vest untorn and whole. And yet there was something about that frozen posture that echoed, horribly, terrifyingly, those last hideous moments in the cemetery, the bloodied bolt buried deep in his chest, Henri’s hands lifting in confused pain.

  Sucking in a quick breath, Emmanuelle jerked her gaze away from those folded hands to her old friend’s familiar face. The wrinkled cheeks were relaxed now and at peace, the white beard soft and immaculately groomed as it never was in life, the unseeing eyes shielded by closed lids. And she had a most peculiar thought. This is Henri, and yet it isn’t. It was as if she were viewing a familiar and yet strangely empty husk, nothing but the shell that had once contained the essence of her friend. And she knew a quick upsurge of fear that nearly swamped her, a fear that shamed her because when she should have been mourning her dead friend she found herself thinking, instead, This could have been me. And she squeezed her eyes shut, her mind whispering into the void of eternity, Oh, God, Henri. I’m so sorry. Was it supposed to be me?

  She opened her eyes and became aware, suddenly, of the line forming at the prie-dieu, of a man coming up hat in hand as her world enlarged once again to include the black-hung parlor with its stopped clocks and quietly conversing mourners. She saw Elise Santerre, her face gray with grief, her spine characteristically straight and her head held determinedly high, and went to touch the elderly woman’s cold, arthritic hand and brush her dry cheek and murmur all the heartfelt but useless phrases one always said at such times. He was a wonderful man. If there’s anything I can do . . .

  It was such a familiar occurrence in this city, death; so familiar that its forms and rituals had become an important part of life here. All about her, food was eaten, sherry sipped from fine crystal glasses, relationships reaffirmed as aunts and uncles and cousins who hadn’t seen one another since the last wake or christening met, and spoke. Funerals and wakes were like weddings and christenings and first communions: they set the pattern, provided the framework of life in New Orleans.

  Normally, conversation at wakes was respectful and yet spontaneous and free-flowing, but not tonight. Tonight, voices were hushed, speech stilted as nervous sideways glances were cast at the blue-uniformed man who stood in one corner, his arms crossed at his broad chest, his golden red hair worn in long, flowing magnificence about his thickset shoulders, his pale eyes narrowed and watchful in an expressionless face. Fletcher, his name was, Emmanuelle remembered. She had expected to see Major Cooper here, and knew a profound moment of disquiet when she found herself disappointed by his absence.

  “Alors, what does he think then?” drawled a familiar French voice behind her. “That the murderer is among us even now, and will betray himself by a fortuitously nervous tic? Or perhaps the guilty one will be so overwhelmed by remorse at the sight of his victim that he’ll fall to his knees in tearful confession.”

  “Antoine.” She turned to the man who stood behind her. Antoine La Touche was a tall, lean man, darker than his sister Claire and older, much older, more than thirty-five now, although it was pain rather than age that had dug the deep lines around his aquiline nose and thin mouth, and etched twin grooves between his light brown eyes. He wore a swallow-tailed evening coat with a satin waistcoat and dress tie, yet everything about him proclaimed the planter: the patrician air, the faintly illusive scent of expensive tobacco, the flawless shine on his leather boots—or rather, boot, for Antoine’s left leg ended midthigh. He had served in the Confederate cavalry for less than a year before he’d caught a minié ball in his knee at Pea Ridge. They’d fought hard to save his leg, Philippe and Henry and Emmanuelle, and still in the end they’d had to cut most of it off. But it was the bayonet wound he’d received in his gut that would eventually kill him. He might live another two years, maybe five, but Antoine La Touche would not make an old man.

  “Antoine,” she said again, her hand closing perhaps too tightly about his left arm just below where it rested idly on the top of his crutch. “I must speak with you.”

  She saw a flicker of surprise in his light brown eyes before they narrowed shrewdly. “Mais oui, ma chère.” He threw a glance at Fletcher, busy scribbling in his notebook. “Although if it’s that important, perhaps we’d do better to step outside.”

  They passed silently through the knots of men and women in the dining room and out onto the rear gallery. The sky was black now with the night, the air heavy with the scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, sweet olive and angels’ trumpet rising up from the darkness of the garden below.

  He took a cheroot from his pocket and lit it, while Emmanuelle went to wrap her hands around the iron railing and stare down at the faint glow of white flowers unfurling toward the moonlight. “Are you all right, Emmanuelle?” he asked quietly, coming to stand beside her. “Even with all you’ve seen, this can’t have been easy for you.”

  She felt his concern like a gentle blanket cast tenderly about her shoulders, and turned her head to smile thankfully up at him. “I’m all right.” Of all of Philippe’s friends, she had always liked Antoine the best, perhaps because she sensed that the wildness that drove him came not so much from innate vice as from boredom. He was an only son, well-educated, yet raised to do nothing except someday take over the plantation that was still firmly under his father’s control.

  “Something’s wrong,” Antoine said, studying her face.

  She nodded. “Has the Yankee provost marshal been to see you?”

  “No. Why would he? Unless”—he narrowed his eyes, the tip of his cheroot glowing red in the darkness—“so it’s true, is it? They dug a miniature crossbow bolt out of Henri’s chest? A bolt with a silver point? Mon Dieu.” He took a quick step away, the tips of his crutches thumping awkwardly on the wooden floorboards as he swung to face her again. “Do they know?”

  “About the vampire-killing set you gave Philippe? I don’t think so. But, Antoine—” She broke off, her head turning at the sound of approaching voices and the echo of footsteps in the carriageway below.

  He reached out to touch his fingers, briefly, to her lips in warning. “We shouldn’t speak of it here.”

  She nodded. “Can you come to the hospital tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  She glanced beyond him, to the crowded rooms inside. “I don’t see Claire. Is she here?”

  He shook his head. “You know how she is.” In the flickering gaslight from the gallery’s high lamp, his face looked pale, tight. “Why?”

  “She was at the hospital this morning, when the provost marshal came. She might have said something.”

  “I doubt it.” Antoine gripped the end of his cheroot with his teeth, his lips curling back. “He’s an interesting man, this provost marshal. Different from Butler and the rest of that gang of lawyers and politicians.”

  “Different?” Emmanuelle rested her back against the cool iron of the gallery’s railing, her hands gripping her elbows at her sides. “How?”

  Antoine let out his breath in a slow hiss of tobacco-scented smoke. “He’s a career cavalry officer, for one thing—a West Point graduate. He’s only been sidelined here because of some injury.”

  Emmanuelle nodded. “His leg. He limps,” she added by way of explanation when Antoine’s eyebrows went up. “I shouldn’t think he’d have much experience with this sort of thing.”

  “Oh, but I’m afraid he does.”

  She shook her head. “How can he?”

  “There was a string of sensational killings at a fort he was posted to out West. Fort McKenna, or some such place. He’s the one who finally caught the killer. It was in all the papers a few years back.”

  In the distance, the c
athedral bells began to chime, tolling the hour. “I never heard of it,” she said, her voice coming out oddly hollow.

  Antoine’s pinched features relaxed into a smile. “That’s because you rarely pay attention to anything that doesn’t involve medicine, ma chère.”

  The rosary began some half an hour later.

  In life, Henri Santerre might have been born a Catholic, but whatever faith he’d once had in a Christian God had died years ago. Her beads passing smoothly through her fingers, Emmanuelle smiled at the thought of what Henri would say if he could see them now, murmuring ancient prayers over his candle-lit corpse. But then she decided he’d understand. Funeral rites had always been more about comforting the living than helping the dead.

  It wasn’t until they were finishing the last decade that she heard an uneven tread upon the stairs, saw a tall, blue-uniformed figure appear in the doorway, then move out onto the gallery in private conversation with the big, redheaded New Yorker.

  So he has come, she thought, and felt her breath quicken with anticipation and what might have been fear, but wasn’t. And then she thought, This man, this man . . . He was her enemy, the enemy of her nation. He suspected her of complicity in murder and could have her condemned without trial or recourse, if he wished. He was a threat to her in ways she wouldn’t admit even to her closest confidant. And yet all she felt at his arrival was a sense of waiting fulfilled, a surge of excitement that was both cerebral and undeniably, damnably sensual in origin.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “The gatekeeper at the St. Louis Cemetery didn’t see anyone,” Zach said, the evening breeze warm against his cheek, the low murmur of voices from the wake inside barely audible above the hum of the locusts and the splash of the fountain in the darkened courtyard below.