Midnight Confessions

by Candice Proctor

  He was sitting at a small table covered with a white cloth in the clearing in front of his house, when she rode up. An empty stool stood across from him, and the table was bare except for a crudely hollowed-out wooden cup filled with cowry shells.

  “You’re going to tell me you were expecting me, right?” she said, reining in.

  He threw back his head and laughed, a deep, rich laugh of genuine amusement. “Miss Emmanuelle. Ever the skeptic.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” she said, and swung out of the saddle.

  He laughed again. “Because you think I might have heard something.”

  She tied the gray to the low branch of a nearby cypress and walked toward him. “Have you?” she asked, stopping just short of the table.

  “Nothing that’s true.”

  “How do you know what’s true?”

  “I only know what I’m told.”

  She hesitated a moment, then went to sit on the far side of the table from him. “All right.” She spread her hands on the clean white cloth; white, the color of purity and protection. “Do it. Shake your cowry shells and invoke your goddess and tell me who’s doing this.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  She caught his gaze, and held it. “Isn’t it?”

  He handed her the wooden cup of shells. “Hold this in both your hands. Clear your mind of everything but what you want to know.”

  She took the cup in her palms, feeling both ridiculous and vaguely hopeful at the same time. It was smooth and surprisingly cool, and vibrating with a strange kind of energy that came near to frightening her.

  “Now close your eyes and shake the shells, and ask your question.”

  She did as she was told, her eyes opening as she felt him lift the cup from her grasp. He shook it himself then, intoning a chant in the language of his youth, a chant that, according to Henri, addressed the four corners and invoked Papa John’s own patron deity but also called on the Almighty Father, for it was a peculiar spiritual mixture, voodoo, combining memories of ancient African religions with the mystical Catholicism of Saint-Dominque, that dark island of the Caribbean where Papa John had once been a slave before the horrors there had brought him and so many like him to New Orleans.

  As she watched, he began to sway back and forth, the muscles of his face going peculiarly slack, his eyes rolling back in his head as he cast himself into a trance. When he suddenly spilled the shells across the tablecloth, she was so startled, she jumped.

  It looked like a simple random scattering of shells to Emmanuelle, but Papa John studied them intently, his features no longer slack, but concentrated now, sharp.

  “Hmmm,” he murmured, leaning over the shells, his forehead creasing as he stared down at them. “Someone is being moved by a dangerous combination of fierce passions. Hatred, but even more so, rage. A dark, burning rage.”

  “I could have told you that,” Emmanuelle said.

  He looked up at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. “Really? How?”

  She felt herself flush, aware suddenly of the contradiction, that she should believe so intensely in the accuracy of her own indefinable perceptions, and at the same time doubt his. “I sensed it. That night in the cemetery.”

  “Directed at you?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned his attention back to the shells. “Mmmm,” he murmured again after a long, anxietyfilled moment.

  “What is it?” she demanded when he said nothing.

  He pointed to some of the shells, which she saw now had fallen in such a way that two lines seemed to run side by side. “I see a double threat. One directed at you, but a second, as well, that will endanger someone you love.”

  “Dominic.” She leaned forward, her voice sharp with near panic. “Oh, God. It’s not Dominic, is it?” She had totally forgotten she didn’t believe any of this.

  Papa John shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  She stood up so quickly, the crude stool tipped over behind her in the grass. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Who is doing this to us? Why won’t you give me a name?”

  He sat back, his hand sweeping in a grand gesture over the cloth. “Do you see a name written here?”

  She gripped the edge of the table and leaned into it. “I only see shells. But you see something. They mean something to you.”

  “They don’t tell me everything.” His voice was quiet, gentle, as he stared up at her. “I used to wish they did, but now I’ve learned to be thankful that they don’t.” He paused, as if reconsidering. “Most of the time.”

  She straightened slowly, ashamed of herself, ashamed of both her panic and her rudeness. “I’m sorry. You tried to help me, and all I did was scream at you.” She took from her reticule the prime Cuban tobacco she had brought him as a gift, and laid it on the table beside him.

  He kept his gaze on her face. “Sometimes we all need to scream.”

  She gave a shaky half-laugh. “Thank you,” she said again, and went to untie her horse. “Aren’t you going to tell me to be careful?” she asked, leading the mare to a stump so she could mount.

  He walked up beside her, his head falling back as he stared up at her. “You’re already being careful. Just . . .” He paused.

  She looked up from adjusting her skirts over the sidesaddle. “Just, what?”

  “Just . . .” He paused again, and gave the mare’s neck a gentle, farewell pat. “Be careful, hmmm?”

  “Is there something I should maybe know about?” Hamish asked.

  They were sitting at the Morning Call, the remnants of a couple orders of doughnuts and café au lait littering the table in front of them. The breeze off the river was cool this morning, bringing them the shouts of luggers tying up at the wharves and the voices of women on their way to market, baskets on their heads, their hips swaying with an innate grace. The air was filled with the smell of olive oil and malt and roasting coffee, and that elusive scent that was unidentifiable and yet purely, distinctively New Orleans.

  “Like, maybe what’s going on between you and that Frenchie widow whose friends seem to have a bad habit of turning up dead,” Hamish was saying.

  Zach turned his head to look at him.

  “And don’t try raising your eyebrows and looking arrogant at me,” continued Hamish, shaking a big, fat finger at him, “because I watched you with her the other day, and I watched her, and even if I’d have been blind, I’d still have known there was something going on just by the way the air was crackling between the two of you.”

  Zach let out a soft laugh that had a catch in it and swung his head away again, to stare out over the square with its wrought-iron fence and swaying sycamore trees and equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, where a workman under the direction of General “Spoons” Butler was busy carving a new inscription on the base: THE UNION MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED.

  “Christalmighty, she’s a suspect,” Hamish said, leaning forward.

  “I’m not so sure she is.”

  “You were before.”

  Zach shrugged. “I think she knows more than what she’s telling us, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it? We’re not exactly popular around here.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Zach leaned back in his seat, his gaze still caught by the workman in the square. “I want you to set some troopers to scouring that cemetery. Have them write down the names of any tombs that show signs of recent repairs, and then go talk to the families involved. We need to find the two black men that German gatekeeper was telling me about. They could have seen something.”

  Hamish pulled out his notebook and scribbled for a moment, then looked up, thoughtful. “You remember how you asked me to see what I could find out about Philippe de Beauvais?”

  “Yes,” said Zach slowly, watching the big New Yorker rub his hand against the back of his neck and screw up his face in a grimace.

  “At first, I thought he must have enrolled in the Confederate medical corps and been killed tha
t way, but he hadn’t. Seems he volunteered to smuggle some Confederate gold out through the bayous, not long after we took the city. He didn’t make it.”

  “A hero’s death,” Zach said softly.

  “Aye. Although from what I hear, it’s no’ what one would have expected of him.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that pretty little French widow’s husband had a dark side to him.”

  “Don’t most people?”

  Hamish shook his head. “Not this dark. We’re talking absinthe houses and high-stakes faro and the nastiest kind of brothels—like that one down on Old Levee Street that sells very young girls—and boys—to very twisted rich men. And I don’t think I’m being told the half of it.”

  Near the iron fence of the square, an old Indian woman was spreading dried plants out on a blanket to sell. Zach watched her thoughtfully. “Sounds like the kind of man someone might be tempted to aim a crossbow at. Or poison. If he were our victim, this whole mess might begin to make some sense.”

  “Yeah? Well, get this: de Beauvais’s little smuggling expedition through the Bayou Crevé? We didn’t just discover it by accident. Someone informed on him.”

  The sun was climbing higher, heating the air, stealing the coolness from the morning, heating the bricks of the banquette and the paving stones in the street. “You going to tell me who?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Hamish, the metal legs of his chair screeching as he pushed it back. “But the way I’m looking at it, we’re not dealing with two murders here. Right now, the score is three and counting. And I’m thinking that Hospital de Santerre is a mighty unhealthy place to be associated with. Unhealthy, and dangerous—like Madame de Beauvais.”

  Zach spent what was left of the morning, and most of the afternoon, overseeing the distribution of food to the city’s poor. But something kept nagging at him, like an old tune he couldn’t quite recall, or a half-remembered dream that hovered just beyond consciousness.

  In the end, he left one of his lieutenants to finish up, and went in search of Antoine La Touche.

  He wasn’t an easy man to locate. Zach finally ran him to ground in a seedy cabaret on Old Levee Street. He was sitting in a dark, smoky corner at a round table covered by a dirty cloth, although Zach noticed that the bottle of cognac at the man’s elbow was one of the best. He was by himself. The wall behind him had at one time been papered with a pale sprigged pattern, but the colors had long ago almost disappeared beneath the grime, and the paper had started to peel. Someone had tried to cover up the worst patches with cheap reproductions of holy pictures. Only in New Orleans, Zach thought.

  As he watched, La Touche drained his glass and reached an unsteady hand for the bottle. At the sight of Zach, he paused, then his hand tightened around the neck of the cognac, and he smiled. “Well. To what do I owe the privilege of a visit from our local provost marshal?”

  The air in the dive was hot and muggy and smelled strongly of beer and whiskey and sweat. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Really?” The other man waved his hand through the air in a languid gesture that sent cognac sloshing up the sides of the bottle. “Talk.”

  It was early yet, but the bar was already full of half-drunk Irishmen and Italians and, here and there, the odd man of color. “Considering the topic, I think you might prefer a more private place.”

  La Touche ran the back of one hand across the small beads of perspiration on his forehead. His silk neck-cloth was askew, the collar of his fine linen shirt limp and yellow with sweat. “Ah. Claire.” His breath came out in a sigh, his gaze dropping to the bottle in his hand. “You’re right. This isn’t the place.”

  He took the bottle with him. Outside, the sun was still baking the tops of the buildings, but compared with the atmosphere in the bar, the air on Old Levee Street smelled sweet and fresh. Pausing on the banquette, one arm draped over the support of his solitary crutch, La Touche squinted up at the fading blue sky streaked with thick, high clouds. “It’s earlier than I expected.”

  “How long have you been drinking?”

  “How long?” The man shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You and your sister must have been close.”

  “No, we weren’t.” La Touche gave a low, mirthless laugh. “You might think that’s why I’m drinking, but you’d be wrong. Regret is such a pathetic, self-indulgent emotion, don’t you agree, Major?”

  “It can be.”

  They turned toward the river, where the stalls in the French Market were closing for the day, the seagulls overhead wheeling and screeching. “Why, Major,” the Creole said, staggering slightly on his crutch as he turned to look at Zach. “I do believe I’ve hit a nerve.”

  “How well did you know your sister?” Zach asked.

  La Touche brought the bottle to his lips again. “I thought we’d already established the answer to that.”

  “Did you know she was intimately involved with a man?”

  He had his head thrown back, his throat rippling as he swallowed. At Zach’s words, he choked. “How delicately phrased, Major.” He brought the bottle down. “Are you being sensitive, I wonder, or are you simply afraid I might take offense and challenge you to a duel? I can still shoot, you know, even if I can no longer fence.”

  Zach waited, and after a moment, the other man said, “My sister Claire has been—was—intimately involved with men since the age of fifteen. The first was a strapping, handsome young Irish laborer hired to repair the paving in the courtyard. The last was anyone’s guess.”

  “Do you know if she was involved with someone at the hospital?”

  “I thought so, at first—altruism not being one of Claire’s more distinguishing characteristics. But in the end, I decided I’d underestimated her.” La Touche leaned his back against one of the market’s massive pillars, the bottle dangling limply by his side, his eyes sliding half-shut. “In the end,” he repeated softly.

  “Did your parents know?”

  He swung his head to look at Zach. “Know what? That their daughter had decided she had as much right to sexual freedom as any son? I don’t think so. Although I could be wrong. Perhaps they simply didn’t want to know.”

  “Why didn’t they marry her off?”

  “Oh, they tried. She refused. She used to say that as long as a husband in America has essentially as much authority over his wife as a master over his slaves, then she would never marry. Never give a man that kind of power over her.” A wry smile twisted his pain-thinned lips. “Of course, for Claire, never didn’t last very long, did it? And the slaves will soon be free, even if the women aren’t.” He took another drink of cognac and eyed Zach over the bottle’s rim. “What do you think? Hmmm? That we killed her because she was a disgrace to the family?” He gave a short, harsh laugh. “She was never half the disgrace I was.”

  “You’re not female.”

  La Touche swung the bottle through the air in a grand gesture. “No, of course. A family’s honor lies between the legs of its women, doesn’t it?” He laughed again. “Am I supposed to have shot old Santerre as well? Whatever for?” His eyes suddenly went wide. “You don’t think—” This time, his laughter echoed with real amusement, quickly cut off. “Oh, Major. I’m afraid not. Claire had highly refined, rather esthetically inclined tastes. She liked her men at least reasonably young and handsome, and visibly virile.”

  The sun was sinking low in the sky, the light growing weak and faintly pink, the bustle in the streets lessening as people hurried home for their evening meal. Zach watched a shoemaker close the shutters on the storefront across the street, then brought his gaze back to the Creole’s thin, pain-nipped face. “What do you know about the death of Philippe de Beauvais?”

  “Philippe?” La Touche frowned, the bottle coming up to his lips again, the shift in subject visibly confusing him. “You killed Philippe—you Yankees. They say he died instantly. Shot right through the head.”

  “Did you know someone had betrayed his mission?”r />
  Perhaps the Creole wasn’t as drunk as Zach had thought. He went quite still, his shattered body drawing up, tensing. It was a moment before he spoke. “No, I didn’t know.” He took another long, deep swallow. “Interesting.”

  Darkness was falling quickly now. Too quickly. Glancing up, Zach realized the sky was filling with clouds blowing in fast. He could feel the wind, smell the promise of rain in its coolness. “You’re going to be late for your sister’s wake,” Zach said, bringing his gaze back to the Creole’s flushed face.

  He shook his head. “Claire always hated wakes.” He gave a mirthless laugh, then said, “It’s funny, isn’t it? How life can change. How the things that once seemed so terribly important to us can in a very short space of time come to mean nothing at all.” He started to bring the bottle up to his lips again, then stopped, his cognac-scented breath gusting out in a weary sigh. “Last spring, at the hospital, there was some big blowup. I don’t know what it was about, but I do know it involved Claire and that English doctor, Yardley.” He rolled his head to look sideways at Zach. “It also involved beaucoup shouting and pushing. If you’d known Claire, you wouldn’t have any difficulty imagining it. Philippe got dragged into it somehow, and then Santerre, who finally managed to break it up. That German boy—the one who lost his foot—he was there, as well. Ask him about it.”

  “Hans Spears?”

  “Oui. Hans. Did you know he was with Philippe at Bayou Crevé? That’s how he was wounded.”