No sense in getting Francis suspicious of where we’ve been. He’ll notice soon enough that some of his papers are gone …
‘What is this?’ demanded Hannibal, arriving on the scene just as Francis and his mother were ushering the posse into the house. ‘Sheriff Quigley.’ He bowed. ‘I’m delighted to see you. I trust you located your nationalist judge in Austin?’
‘I did,’ said the sheriff grimly. ‘And I have a judge’s warrant here, for the arrest of Mrs Taggart on a charge of murder.’
She said, quietly, ‘I wasn’t here.’
‘Hah!’ retorted her mother-in-law. ‘And that wasn’t your shawl, I collect, that was on the ground beside my poor son’s body! Oh, no! Nor your pistol …’
‘It sounds like an awfully silly thing to drop,’ pointed out Hannibal. ‘I mean, something that large – wouldn’t a killer of average intelligence have noticed it?’
‘In any case,’ put in Francis, ‘it scarcely matters.’ His spectacles flashed in the light from the open door as he threw back his head. ‘I mean, obviously, this woman thought to murder my brother as a way of seizing control of Rancho Perdition—’
‘I had control of it already!’ Valentina stamped her foot on the red tile of the hall. ‘Three-quarters of it is mine! My land!’
‘Not according to my brother’s will.’ Francis held up the slim sheaf of extremely fresh-looking papers that he held. ‘I found this this morning, Mr Quigley, slipped into the back of one of my poor brother’s account-books. It’s dated—’
‘It is a forgery!’ Valentina whirled on him, blue eyes snapping with fury. ‘Ask anyone who knew my husband! He hated the very thought of making a will. And he hated his brother. Any of his friends will tell you this. This … this cowardly milk-toast has been shut up for the past two days in his study, trying to write in my husband’s hand—’
Francis’s face twitched in hatred and alarm, and he stuck his ink-stained hand into his trouser pocket.
‘That’s certainly what you’d think of, you Papist hussy!’ Madame Taggart shouted, and Quigley raised his hands.
‘Ladies—’
‘You only want me out of the way,’ stormed Valentina, ‘to make way for your precious son—’
‘Ladies,’ repeated Quigley, more firmly. ‘That’s as may be, and that’ll be for the courts to decide. But in my opinion, and that of Judge Ananias Kendrick, there is sufficient evidence for me to arrest Mrs Taggart, to take affidavits for all possible witnesses and to search the house for evidence—’
Francis blenched, and threw a quick glance up the stairs.
Probably remembering that unlocked bedroom door and the papers on his desk.
‘Mr Sefton, you’ll be representing Mrs Taggart’s interests—’
‘I’ll work through a local colleague,’ said Hannibal smoothly. ‘As I’m not licensed to practice law in the Republic of Texas.’
January privately doubted whether any lawyer practicing in the republic needed a license to do so, but kept his mouth shut about that, too.
‘But yes …’
‘Mrs Taggart,’ said the sheriff, ‘with your permission I’ll have Doc Meredith here –’ he signed back through the open doors, to the physician, who stood among the men of the posse – ‘accompany you upstairs, if there’s anything you’ll need to collect. Mrs Taggart –’ he bowed to Amelia Taggart, like a harpy in her mourning frock and ablaze with spiteful triumph – ‘Mr Taggart –’ to Francis – ‘if there’s a place we could go to take your statements. I’ll need Miss Marryat’s statement as well, about the finding of the shawl and the pistol.’
‘I’ll get her,’ said Francis. ‘She’s been indisposed …’ He bolted up the stairs.
Well, reflected January, he can’t very well make an outcry about the rough drafts of his forgery being missing from his study at this point.
NINETEEN
Between riding out to look at canyons in the hills, searching caves, burying bodies, and collecting information from servants, this was the first occasion on which January actually heard the evidence as Madrecita Taggart and her corroborators presented it.
‘I never trusted that girl.’ Amelia Taggart sank into a bergère chair whose pink brocade upholstery contrasted sharply and awkwardly with the spare white plaster and simpler furnishings of the adobe hacienda. January had noted, when he’d earlier passed the door of the large main parlor, that this was clearly the place that Vin Taggart’s mother and aunt had taken for their own when they’d turned up on his doorstep last October. Unlike most dwellings January had known in Mexico – and indeed, unlike the French Creole houses in New Orleans – the parlor was cluttered with bandy-legged chairs, a breakfront cabinet embellished with Corinthian pillars, a mahogany cellaret, three small occasional tables with clawed feet and marble tops, several patent Argand lamps with pink roses painted on their chimneys, a carved wooden clock inlaid with far too much brass, and heavy swagged curtains of teal-blue velvet and gold that ‘puddled’ fashionably on the tiled floor. (Wait til they’re here in the summer when the tarantulas come out …)
Not-very-good Biblical scenes adorned the walls, (January, having lived for sixteen years in Paris, was a terrible snob about art) alternating with portraits whose stiff, expressionless faces were offset by intricate portrayals of every detail of the sitters’ lace and brocade costumes.
On the cellaret beside Madame Taggart’s chair stood a half-empty cut-crystal decanter and a glass, which she refilled to the top and took a revivifying sip. Her pale eyes narrowed as they regarded her daughter-in-law. ‘Oh, poor Vincent was taken with her pretty eyes and her fawning ways, I daresay, but from the first I saw her for what she was.’
Valentina came in at this point, rigid with anger, and at these words stamped her foot. ‘That is not—’
Quigley raised a finger. ‘You’ll have your say, Mrs Taggart.’ He settled on the chair opposite, hard and shiny black horsehair, and spread open a dusty memorandum-book on his knee. ‘Right now we just need the facts about what happened last Monday.’
‘Sunday.’ Madame set her glass down and re-filled it with barely a glance at what she was doing. The ‘finding’ of the will having settled who’d get the land – in her eyes, at least – she seemed ready to have Valentina put out of the way once and for all.
‘Easter – the Lord’s Day – which my poor son felt himself unable to honor because of the work that needs to be done on this place. Even on such a day, because of the laziness, the wastefulness, the thievery of that Yankee trash overseer, those Mexican good-for-nothings and the sheer stupidity of the field hands, Vincent was in the saddle before sun-up. And when he returned, as night was falling, exhausted, that wife of his lit into him, screaming accusations that he’d been with a woman! Well! Maybe where she was brought up men could be expected to spend the Sabbath – and Easter Sunday, of all days! – consorting with their mistresses—’
‘I did not—’
‘M’am.’ Quigley lifted a hand again, then turned his attention back to his notebook.
‘I was here, in this room.’ Madame’s mouth was a tight line of anger. ‘I heard their voices and came to the door. My poor son had not even come inside yet when she started in on him, and him covered with dust and bowed, bent, he was so tired. He said only, “Leave me alone, woman!” but of course she didn’t. She followed him up the stairs, ranting and shouting, and goaded him so that he shouted back at her. Ask poor Francis – ask poor Alicia – the whole house heard them! And she should accuse him of infidelity, after his patience in bearing with her adulteries, the way she carried on with that swinish priest from San Antonio, and then later with one of the Mexican cowhands!’ Her eyes blazed with the spiteful anger of the self-righteous. ‘She was angry because my poor son had finally had enough and sent the man away last week. Don’t try to deny it, Miss!’
‘I do deny it!’ protested Valentina angrily. ‘My husband trusted Ortega – he himself told him, to ride with me! He himself warned me never to
go out riding without Ortega—’
‘Then why did he turn him off?’ demanded her mother-in-law.
‘I don’t know!’
‘Huh! He finally had his eyes opened to what was going on between the two of you!’ She turned back to Quigley in triumph. ‘When she sneaked out of here Monday morning – and don’t think I wasn’t aware of what you were up to, girl! – I daresay it was to meet with that Mexican, instead of to kiss the feet of that heathen priest of hers.’
‘You saw her leave?’ asked the sheriff in a patient voice.
‘I heard her. I don’t sleep well.’ She raised the backs of her black-mitted knuckles to her forehead, and sighed deeply. ‘Not in this terrible place. I heard my son take his departure, well before the sun was up – as he always did, so hard-working as he was, and with Vabsley and the men needing a firm hand. I’d barely turned over and closed my eyes, when I heard her creep down the stair.’
Valentina opened her mouth to protest again, but Quigley waved her silent.
‘After that I finally got some sleep. I’d been up half the night, unable to sleep because of the terrible threats she’d uttered.’
‘She threatened him?’
‘She did,’ said Madame decidedly. ‘I heard her clearly shout, “I will kill you!”—’
‘I said nothing of the kind!’
‘Then in the morning,’ she went on firmly, ‘I came down and had breakfast—’
‘What time?’ asked Hannibal mildly.
‘Oh, heavens, I don’t know. Nine o’clock? Ten o’clock? It takes that wretched girl of mine forever to bring up hot water, and then when she does it’s usually stone cold. I went over the account books with Enoch – this place would go bankrupt, the way my poor son managed it. Not that it was his fault,’ she added.
She took another sip of her glass, and re-filled it again. ‘At ten o’clock my sister came into the parlor and said, “My goodness, what on earth is Valentina doing out in the orchard?” I got up – I was here in this parlor – and she and I went into the dining-room—’
‘That’s down the hall and into the main dining-room, or into the smaller work-room beyond the pantry?’ inquired Hannibal.
Madame looked nonplussed, and her eyes shifted, mentally – January assumed – counting windows and calculating angles and realizing that neither from the main dining-room, nor from the work-room beyond it, could any portion of the orchard be seen. ‘The room beyond,’ she said after a moment. ‘And we saw my daughter-in-law – er – come around the corner of the house from the direction of the orchard, hurrying and holding her skirts up.’
‘Which direction was she going in?’
Another swift calculation. ‘The corrals. She was going to the corrals. We all saw her! Alicia, and Francis, and myself—’
‘So Francis was with you in the parlor?’
‘Yes. No. That is –’ she glared at Hannibal with a sort of envenomed annoyance – ‘Francis was in the library next to the parlor, and joined Alicia and myself.’ Then she shrugged again. ‘Well, I didn’t think a thing of it, and went back into the parlor. But I had a terrible premonition of dread,’ she added, a little contradictorily. ‘Luncheon was served at one – I insist upon punctuality, because there’s no bearing it if the household isn’t run properly, not that Mexicans –’ here she glared at Valentina – ‘have the smallest idea of such a thing. And it was just after luncheon that that scoundrel Malojo came running up to the house, shouting that my poor son …’
She sniffed, and turned her face aside to dab her eyes. ‘My poor son …’
Her description of the body matched the one January had already heard from Twenty-One and Missouri: that Vin Taggart lay on his back, dressed in his riding-clothes of wool trousers and a rough tweed coat; that he had been shot once, through the chest, at a range so close that the gunflash had burned the cotton of his shirt. His horse had been found tied at the far side of the orchard.
Valentina’s red-flowered silk shawl had lain a foot or so from the body, and half beneath it, one of the several pistols that Taggart had given his bride. ‘It was horrible,’ she whispered. ‘Horrible. He had … bled … a great deal. Poor Alicia fainted – the poor girl has no stamina – and when she was brought round, went into strong hysterics. The men said they’d found that woman’s mare near the stables, with its reins tangled in a broken-off branch, and well over an hour later that … that hussy herself walked in off the prairie as cool as you please, with some cock-and-bull tale of being shot at by Indians and having to take refuge in a convenient hut.’
Quigley nodded, deliberately turned a page of his memorandum-book, then took from his pocket a penknife, with which he sharpened the point of his pencil. Enoch tapped at the parlor door, and asked, would maybe the gen’lemen outside like to have some beer sent out from the kitchens?
‘Absolutely not!’ Madame glared at him. ‘I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, beer costs fifteen dollars a barrel in town – fifteen dollars American! – and how they dare charge that for it I cannot imagine! And no man needs beer. There’s a well in the courtyard, and I assume your men –’ she turned haughtily to Quigley – ‘know how to operate a bucket.’
Patiently, the sheriff said, ‘They do that, m’am.’ He added, ‘Thank you, Enoch. That was a kind thought.’ And turning back to Valentina, said, ‘Now let’s hear what you have to say about all this, Mrs Taggart.’
As a child, January had early mastered the skills of remaining quiet and unnoticed, no small feat for a boy who’d always been taller than every other child of his year on Bellefleur Plantation. The plantation’s master had been a violent drunkard, and every child, he suspected, who had grown up in that toxic compound had learned how to stay either out of sight or at least away from the notice of anybody white. Before the age of six January had had two ribs broken for “What’re you lookin’ at, boy?”.
He didn’t draw attention to himself now by taking physical notes, but as he listened to Valentina’s account of descending from her room – ‘I went down the backstair, as I always did …’ – and riding out to Sauceito Creek it occurred to him to wonder where the hell Francis had gone. And what he was telling Aunt Alicia. The young man had taken the ‘will’ away with him, and probably also the ‘written instructions’ allegedly concerning his older brother’s incapacity or death.
How good a forger is Francis?
And how would Francis have learned of Hookwire’s death – if it was he who’d hired him? (And who else would have?)
I’ll have to speak to Juana – she was another on Valentina’s list as trustworthy – about when Madame actually got out of bed. Get a better idea of where she, and Alicia, and Francis really were Monday morning, and what they’d been doing. Had they had visitors? Letters?
He cursed the rush of events (and the night of digging) that had prevented him from checking these things.
And why was Ortega turned off? The fact that Valentina hadn’t murdered her husband (if it was a fact – he reminded himself that four years ago she’d been as adept a liar as Mrs Passmore) didn’t mean that she hadn’t been having an affaire with Ortega. The man was decades too old and not nearly handsome enough to fit Valentina’s tastes …
But tastes change …
And am I ever going to get a decent meal in this place? He had, he realized, been in the saddle since before daybreak, and it was now halfway to sunset …
And where the hell did Mrs Passmore get to?
Quigley finished taking down Valentina’s account, then he, too, frowned, and looked first at the overly-elaborate clock, then at the door to the hall. He rose, and went to put his head through it, listening. Hannibal stepped quietly over to him and January, standing in his corner, heard the fiddler murmur, ‘If I may make a suggestion, sir …’
Quigley raised his brows.
‘When young Mr Taggart and Miss Marryat do arrive, you may want to get their stories of Monday’s events separately.’ Hannibal turned aside to cough, bra
cing himself against the door frame. ‘And keep them from talking to Madame Taggart until you’ve gotten both of their stories.’
The lawman considered him with thoughtful gray eyes. His voice, like the fiddler’s, was pitched low, to exclude the two women – who were too busy reviling one another anyway to have heard a word. ‘You sound like you think they might not match up, sir.’
‘I fully expect them to be identical in every particular, sir.’ Hannibal inclined his head respectfully. ‘But surely you’ve had the experience of one witness to an event remembering different details than—’
The door at the back of the house banged. Francis’s voice gasped, in the hall, ‘My God!’ and both the sheriff and Hannibal plunged through the parlor door, followed immediately by January, with the two women, their quarrel postponed though probably not forgotten, at his heels.
Francis stood in the dining-room door, clinging to the door-jamb, mousy hair falling over his forehead and his eyebrows – even behind his spectacles – standing out against a face pallid with shock. ‘My God,’ he gasped again. ‘Aunt Alicia …’
Enoch appeared behind him in the dining-room door and steadied him as he tried to step forward. In one hand he carried something, a bulky wad of white cloth, crumpled tight. By his hands, and the knees of his trousers, he had fallen several times outside already. January dodged back into the parlor and snatched up the rum bottle and glass from the cellaret. These he thrust into Hannibal’s hands and scooped up the shaken boy, carried him into the parlor.
‘What is it?’ Quigley demanded.
Francis sobbed again, ‘Aunt Alicia. Dead. In the orchard—’
January laid him down on the parlor sofa; the boy clutched at his mother’s hands, his own shaking like twigs in a high wind.
The bespectacled blue eyes went to Quigley’s, and Francis added, ‘This was in her hand.’
He opened his fist, to display one of Hannibal’s old-fashioned white neckcloths.
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