Cold Bayou

by Barbara Hambly

  In silence January looked down at that beautiful averted face, that had seemed so child-like when she gazed at Uncle Veryl. She was kind to me, Hannibal had said of her, even when she could see no profit in it.

  ‘However it may be.’ The girl sighed, and wiped her eyes. ‘When M’am Chloë come to me at the window after dinner that night, an’ whispered that Tommy was here and Tommy would be waitin’ for me at the dead-huts, I knew me mind was made up. I knew starvin’ to death with him – an’ likely we will starve, on account of we have to run from Uncle Mick – an’ breakin’ poor Mr St-Chinian’s old heart, was better than livin’ always either lookin’ over me shoulder or wipin’ peoples’ spit off me skirts. I’m sorry, m’am,’ she added, taking Chloë’s hand. ‘They’re your family an’ I shouldn’t speak ill of ’em. But one of ’em did try to murder me, if Mr J is tellin’ the truth.’

  ‘And yet you didn’t take any of the jewelry Uncle Veryl bought for you,’ said Chloë.

  Spots of embarassed pink flared on Ellie’s pale cheeks. ‘I ain’t sayin’ I’m no angel with a halo on me head,’ she admitted. ‘Sometimes it’s either lie or starve. An’ I’ll be the first to tell you I bought many a dress with the wages of sin.’

  She glanced shyly at Tommy, who hugged her again and said, ‘Lord, Ellie, you want to sit down some night an’ discuss each other’s sins over a bottle of brandy I’ll have you runnin’ for the door.’

  ‘I just … I couldn’t take them from Mr St-Chinian. He loves me. He really does. That’s the hardest part,’ she added after a moment. ‘It’ll hurt him so bad.’

  ‘But possibly,’ said January, ‘prolong his life – since another attempt might not involve only one of you.’

  She – and Chloë – stared at him, Chloë with eyes like glass calculating-beads behind her thick spectacles, Ellie with her lovely mouth open in shocked protest.

  January produced two silver spoons from his pocket, and held them up to Chloë. ‘Who has spoons of those patterns?’

  ‘The acanthus-leaf pattern is one of the ones from the dining-room here,’ said the girl promptly. ‘They were Granmère Duquille’s. French – Robert-Josephe Auguste – you can see the hallmark here. I think part of Uncle César’s quarrel with Cousin Locoul was that Locoul supposedly sold about half that set to pay his gaming debts – that’s what the rest of them are doing here, along with that horrid Sheffield stuff that my mother got for her wedding that nobody in the family would have in their houses.’

  She took the other spoon, turned it in small thin fingers like a child’s. ‘This looks like the townhouse silver from Madame Mabillet’s.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Madame Marie-Honorine Mabillet was at her son’s bedside when January and Chloë reached the big house at sunset.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Old Madame Janvier, after she’d embraced Chloë and cried out her thanks that she was safe, and had sent her maid running along the gallery toward the main house where everyone was assembling for dinner. ‘Absolutely intrepid! She will let nothing keep her from her son’s side.’

  January said quietly, ‘So I apprehend, Madame.’

  Chloë raised an eyebrow, and said nothing on that subject.

  It was Charlotte who met January at the door of Jules’ sickroom, her chinless, earnest face drawn with anxiety. ‘Will he be all right, Ben? She brought her own medicine – she won’t listen to me …’

  ‘Good Heavens, child, I should hope not!’ From within the room, the mother’s voice came low and musical as she rose from her chair beside the bed, her movements too graceful to permit her tall, wide-shouldered form to be called ‘lanky’. Dark-haired, like Jules, and like her son possessed of Byronic dark eyes and a ferociously aquiline nose. ‘One day you’ll understand, dear child,’ she added in a caressing voice, and crossed to put a strong hand on Charlotte’s cheek. ‘You’re seventeen; you have no experience in such things. Life will teach you.’

  Turning to January, she held out her hand. ‘I so much appreciate your efforts on behalf of my son, M’sieu. Of course you did as you thought best. Sidonie tells me you trained at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris. How shocking you must find Louisiana, after such experiences! But I have been accustomed to nurse my son for many years, and have an exact knowledge of his constitution. He is …’ Her dark brows tweaked in pain. ‘His nervous system is extremely sensitive, for all his great strength. He suffered agonies as a child.’

  January’s eyes went to the satchel that stood open on the bedside table. Another thick square bottle of Kendal’s Black Drop stood beside it – like the one which had appeared so mysteriously on the bedside table Wednesday night – and though the twilight had only begun to gather a dozen candles glimmered on the necks of the bottles inside. Then he glanced, very briefly, at the hem of her skirt, splashed and damp, as if she’d stepped from a boat to the front steps of the gallery. ‘He is fortunate to have such a mother,’ he replied. ‘You must have come on the wings of the wind.’

  ‘Men don’t understand.’ She shook her head with a sigh. ‘Have you a child, M’sieu? How could you not fly to his side, the moment you heard of his need?’

  ‘I’m frankly astonished that you did hear,’ said Chloë. ‘I take it the boats are running again?’

  ‘It wasn’t a proper steamboat from town,’ provided Charlotte. ‘Just one of those keel-boat things, with food—’

  ‘It is as I said.’ Old Madame Janvier’s voice was filled with pride in her friend. ‘Nothing can keep her away.’

  Not even, apparently, reflected January – though he had the good sense not to say it – the fact that there was no possible way for this handsome, energetic woman to have heard of her son’s injury, and to reach his side today, had she not known already that he had been hurt.

  No way, had she not been one of the ‘French biddies’ who disembarked at English Turn at the same time as Tommy Kildare had – and Tommy’s description of her that morning had been quite accurate, down to the color of her dress. The woman who had encouraged – if not ordered – her son to ride like the hero of a Walter Scott ballad to propose marriage to a girl whose inheritance wouldn’t be assured until Ellie Trask was dead.

  At least, thought January, watching the white-haired old lady clasp the hands of her younger friend, that was the logical sequence of events. Though his leg still felt like it had been put through a pair of cane-rollers, he forced himself to limp across the little room to Jules Mabillet’s bedside, to check the young man’s pulse (slight), breathing (shallow and irregular), pupils (he’d seen bigger eyes in needles) and to block Madame Mabillet’s view of the bed while Chloë had a quick look at the bottles in her medicine case.

  Not that it mattered. His testimony wouldn’t be admitted in court against any white person, let alone against a French Creole matron of spotless reputation. He’d gone up against members of that species before and was lucky he’d come out of the encounter alive. And no one would care …

  Feet thundered on the gallery and January, seated in the bent-willow chair beside the bed, braced himself. ‘Where is she?’ roared Mick Trask’s hoarse voice, over Thisbe’s challenging soprano bark. ‘What has that cold little bitch done wi’ my girl? If harm’s come to her—’

  Chloë got quickly to her feet, but it was Madame Mabillet who blocked the doorway with one splendid arm, who faced the clot of angry Irishmen on the gallery like a Byzantine empress staring down a parcel of beggars.

  ‘Be silent! My boy is ill – dying, maybe!’

  She was closer to the truth than she knew, thought January, but he also guessed that she’d said so mostly for effect. It pulled Trask up short, and before he could draw breath Chloë went to the doorway, cold and prim as ever despite her sweat-streaked face and bedraggled dress.

  Behind Trask, Uncle Veryl pushed his way through the Irishmen and stretched out his hands. ‘Chloë!’ and old Mr Singletary struggled forward after him, as if ready to single-handedly pummel the boys to death.

  ‘M’s
ieu Trask,’ said Chloë, in her precise English. ‘So far as I know, your niece is well. Please …’ she added, as her uncle, weeping with the sudden release of his fear, would have embraced her. ‘Let’s go inside. Benjamin …’

  Since nothing he could do or say would have had the slightest effect on keeping Madame Mabillet from killing her son with pain medicine, January got painfully to his feet again, picked up the stick he’d been using all day as a crutch, and limped to her side. Trask’s face twisted with rage at the sight of him and he grated, ‘You!’ but Chloë held up her hand again.

  ‘Please, M’sieu,’ she said again, and led the way into the next room along the upstream wing of the house, which happened to be Singletary’s. The gallery was by this time jammed with further spectators, crowding from the main house and all talking at once, Thisbe darting among them with excited yelps. January heard someone ask, ‘Did they find her body?’ And Euphémie responded in her trumpet of a voice, ‘I don’t see anything in the boat.’

  All the boys crowded into Singletary’s room with their boss. Singletary would never have thought to offer the little chamber’s single chair to a lady but brought it up for January.

  Chloë remained standing, barely taller than Trask’s top waistcoat-button.

  From the pocket of her skirt, she brought out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to Veryl, and her cold blue eyes stopped Trask’s effort to snatch it out of the old man’s shaky grasp as if she’d turned him to stone.

  deer Mr St-Chinian,

  pleese forgiv me I canot mary you I am in love wit someone els who is good and who loves me. wen they kilt Valla I saw I wud never be hapy but always afraid. pleese tell Uncle Mick it aint anybodys falt an not to go look for us we wil be alrite. pleese pleese find someone els an be hapy an do not be angry wit me. I wil always be yor true frend.

  Ellie

  The name was written in larger characters, straggling and uneven, and Veryl’s eyes flooded with tears at the sight of it, even as Uncle Mick plucked the paper from his fingers.

  ‘Tommy,’ he snarled. ‘That’s his way o’ printin’ – worthless bog-trash bastard! The cat eat his bones an’ the devil eat the cat! Who o’ yez knew o’ this?’ He whirled on his boys, who all backed up a pace, and he lashed out with his open hand, knocking Gopher sprawling into the wall and drawing blood from Syksey O’Neill’s nose. The Black Duke took the blow without flinching, though the print of his boss’s palm stood red on his pockmarked cheek as he replied.

  ‘For all I could see – for all any of us could see – he was sicker’n a horse when he got off that boat. You saw him, Boss. An’ you heard him when he said, wasn’t necessary for none of us to stay wid him—’

  ‘Don’t you tell me what I saw an’ what I heard!’ bellowed Trask.

  ‘Mesel’,’ added the Duke, ‘I thought it might even be for the best, if he wasn’t to see Ellie – Miss Trask,’ he corrected himself. ‘I knowed he was always sweet on her.’

  Trask struck him again. ‘An’ it never crossed your flea-size brain that him bein’ sweet on her might mean he was fixin’ to go ashore an’ convince her to run off wid him? Jesus wept! An’ him widdout a pot to piss in, an’ her throwin’ herself away on a pot-lickin’ turf-cutter. Where’d you find this, girl?’ He swung around on Chloë, and for a shocked instant January thought he’d strike her, too.

  After a moment’s silence, in which she merely regarded him with her huge bespectacled eyes, Chloë replied, ‘I found it in the dead-huts – those old runaway shacks in the woods a mile behind the Casita. I woke Wednesday night to find Mamzelle gone. I was afraid she’d gone to the dead-huts – she’d told me that afternoon that she thought that the clue to find Valla’s killer might be there. She was most upset – devastated – at her maid’s murder, and she said several times that no one seemed to want to know who’d done it. That people seemed to be afraid of that information coming out.’

  She blinked innocently up at Uncle Mick, and January saw that the black rage that passed across his eyes was no longer directed at her, but at those who’d turned up their noses at his niece.

  In point of fact, during the long, tiring paddle back through the swamps from where they’d left the runaway lovers (and Tommy’s rented horse) on the more-or-less dry ground just above English Turn, January and Chloë had agreed that absolutely nothing was to be gained by any account of Ellie being poisoned. There was no evidence of who had put what into Ellie’s plum brandy – notwithstanding the clear signs that after doing so, Madame Mabillet had paid a surreptitious visit to her feverish son, had dosed him to within an inch of his life, and had left a bottle of Kendal Black Drop and a spoon behind her.

  Uncle Mick growled, ‘She always was a headstrong little thing,’ and the anger was gone from his voice.

  The Black Duke answered, with a reminiscent half-grin, ‘That she was, Boss. An’ kind. Who’d a thought she’d get that put about over the killin’ of a nigger wench?’

  Those brooding blue eyes turned back to Chloë: ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I found this note at the dead-huts. It was raining hard, but I found one of her hairpins—’ Chloë had prudently taken several from Ellie when they’d parted, and one of these she held up in corroboration – ‘where there’s a sort of path leading deeper into the ciprière. There’s a broken-down house several miles deeper in the woods, you see, and it looked as if she were on her way there, to meet this … this man she speaks of. I think she must have heard of the place from Valla, who spent several years here. With the storm, I was most afraid she’d get lost, so I tried to follow her there, calling out for her. Then the water started coming up. I made it to the house, where I found another hairpin, and evidence that a meal had been eaten there – breadcrusts and eggshells and a couple of empty ginger-beer bottles. They’d left – forgotten – some of their provisions, but I didn’t find those until daylight. If it wasn’t for that I think I’d have starved, when the flood trapped me there.’

  Outside the French doors the clamor of voices was louder, Madame Aurelié’s trumpeting, ‘Nonsense! I must and will speak to that ridiculous man …’ and Henri’s, pleading, eager, ‘But she’s all right? You saw her and she’s all right …’

  Uncle Mick turned, opened the door a crack, and bellowed through it, ‘Shut up out there! Go eat your fooken’ dinner!’

  ‘And save some for me,’ suggested Chloë.

  ‘An’ save some for M’am Viellard!’ He slammed the door, turned to January. ‘And where do you fit into all this, boy-o? We thought you roasted, night before last, when the wood store burned down. You set that fire yourself?’ His voice was conversationally inquiring; January shook his head.

  ‘I managed to get out,’ he replied non-committally. ‘I had – I’ve always had – the idea that Valla wasn’t killed in mistake for Miss Trask. That whoever murdered her, did so for his own reasons. And yes, your niece was right – I found the evidence for this at the dead-huts. It was daylight by then and I saw smoke from deeper in the ciprière, and I thought it might well have been either Madame Viellard, or Miss Trask, or both. I’d heard about there being a house somewhere back there on a chenier—’

  ‘You swim there?’ inquired Trask mildly. ‘Or ride a water-pookah like the leprechuans do?’

  ‘I paid an alligator to carry me.’

  Under the tuft of black mustache, a tooth gleamed. ‘Musta been a big one.’

  ‘It was. How’s my mother, by the way?’

  ‘Your mother …’ Syksey O’Neill’s voice almost trembled with loathing, but he caught his boss’s glance, and he fell silent.

  ‘Your mother is well,’ returned Trask. ‘Syksey’s been guarding her. She’s had tea a couple of times wid Old M’am Janvier and plays whist wid the ladies over at the weaving house.’

  January glanced swiftly at O’Neill and said, ‘I hope to God you haven’t tried to play cards with my mother!’

  ‘Not more’n oncet.’

  It was dark outside by this time. Wh
en the French door opened onto the gallery, January could see that the level of the floodwater, which had been slowly sinking all day, was down to the fourth step from the top. Everyone in the house, from Madame Aurelié to the Viellard girls’ maids, crowded the gallery, shadowy forms in the reflected glow of candlelight from the windows in the house’s main block. Chloë went out first, and while Henri was desperately embracing her (‘Really, Henri, I’m quite all right …’) January said softly, ‘M’sieu Trask?’

  The Irishman turned.

  ‘I’d take it as a great favor if neither you nor your men spoke of what I said about the girl Valla’s murder. Tomorrow I’ll get word to the parish sheriff – he’s got to be making rounds along the river, now that the water’s going down – and I’d rather we took the killer by surprise, rather than let him get away.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ agreed Trask, as amiably as if he hadn’t come within inches of drowning January on the previous morning. ‘Anybody we know?’

  ‘Probably not well.’

  The boys nodded assent, and pushed their way out onto the gallery. January, turning back, saw that Uncle Veryl had remained sitting on the end of his friend Singletary’s bed, his narrow shoulders bowed, still holding the note in his hands. Singletary, standing beside him, fidgeted awkwardly – a theorist who had never in his life known what to say to other people, how to share joy or express grief.

  January limped back to the two old men, put a hand on Veryl’s shoulder. ‘Can I get you anything, sir?’ he asked.

  Veryl shook his head. After a long time, he said, ‘I wish she’d taken the jewels. They’ll need money. She and her … her friend.’

  ‘I think maybe she didn’t want you to think worse of her, sir,’ said January. ‘To think she would take the gifts you gave her, and give them to another man.’ There was a word for women who did that, and though it had probably been an accurate enough description at periods in Ellie Trask’s life, it wasn’t one that he’d speak to the bereft old gentleman before him.