Murder in July

by Barbara Hambly

  January wiped the blood from his eyes as he was helped to a bench indoors. A gate lodge, such as a porter or concierge would sit in during the day, and an elderly man in shirtsleeves leaning over him in the greasy orange glow of an oil lamp. ‘You all right, m’sieu? Can you see me? You see one finger here, or two?’

  ‘One,’ January managed to say, and a tall young man wearing a footman’s crimson livery breeches came in with a tin cup of water. At least I don’t have a concussion …

  ‘Bandits!’ exclaimed the elderly concierge in a scandalized voice. ‘Robbers! Since the riots they think they own the night! And this “King of the French”, pah! What does he do about it, eh? Why, in the days of Napoleon, a girl could have walked from Marseilles to Calais carrying a bag of money, and no one would have—’

  ‘What is this, Etienne?’ The gold light of a half-dozen candles brightened the open archway that led from the lodge to the courtyard. Looking around, January saw the Comte de Belvoire with a candelabra in his hand. ‘Who is this man?’

  The concierge bowed. January, conscious that the comte was his host (and it was probably his brandy that someone had considerately mixed with the water in the tin cup he’d been offered), got to his feet, staggered, and fell back onto the bench. ‘He was hurled from a speeding carriage into our gateway, monsieur,’ the footman Jacques explained.

  Another candelabra behind de Belvoire’s shoulder, and a man’s cultivated voice inquired from the darkness, ‘He isn’t one of yours, is he, Balthasar? Or one of those others you hired to find Celestin?’

  ‘Gran-Polisson never said he had Africans working for him …’

  January recognized the name of a man whom Chatoine had spoken of as running one of the gangs that stole goods from the quais. In hard times like this, when even such little work as was available in the city was disrupted, of course the wharf gangs, and the crews of pickpockets and thieves that haunted the dreary alleyways of districts like St-Antoine, would hire out their services to whoever cared to pay them.

  To Louis-Balthasar de Gourgue, Comte de Belvoire, certainly.

  And to his son?

  But if Belvoire hired them to find Celestin …

  ‘My name is Benjamin Janvier, monsieur.’ January struggled to his feet again, and spoke in the excellent French he’d been taught at the Academy de St-Louis after his mother had attained her freedom. In his torn and filthy clothes, his face swollen by bruises, he was well aware that upper-class French was his quickest means of proving to Philippe de la Marche’s father that he wasn’t some brawling sailor who’d been beaten up on a spree.

  ‘Thank you – thank you all …’ He turned and executed a second bow to Etienne and Jacques, before returning his gaze to Belvoire. ‘You have most certainly saved my life. I am a musician – you may ask anyone at court, from the Comte de Noailles to Monsieur de Polignac—’ he named his two most socially prominent employers – ‘and they will assure you of my bona fides.’

  Not that the Comte de Noailles – or any other nobleman – ever actually met face to face the musicians he hired to play at his entertainments: such things were done by a nobleman’s steward. But if it came down to cases, January knew that his height and his striking appearance would guarantee that at least some of his employers could vouch for him. Besides, in the world of the court – as the Puss in Boots of legend could have attested – mention of a socially elite lord’s name was usually enough. The second constellation of candle flame bobbed in the archway and January recognized the man who peeked in over de Belvoire’s shoulder as Lucien Imbolt’s Butterball Senior: the Marquis de Taillefer.

  Whose daughter Philippe had left for the sweeter charms of Daniel’s company.

  That same daughter whom he now hoped to wed to Philippe’s younger brother, the new-minted and now missing heir, Celestin.

  A number of thoughts fell together in his mind.

  ‘They set upon me in the Rue des Trois-Maries,’ he said, ‘where I had been playing for the christening party of a friend’s new son. Men are desperate,’ he added gloomily, shaking his head, ‘if they think a man such as myself, at such a season of the year, would have more than a few sous on his person. One would think that an honest man could walk about Paris in relative safety—’

  This was enough to set Etienne – and both the comte and the marquis – off on the subject of the new king’s disruption of the Paris police force, and the shortcomings of the new regime in general (‘Factory owners and jumped-up nobodies – what do they know of the administration of the realm?’). In the ensuing flood of indignation, the issue of why January’s attackers had thrown him into the Comte de Belvoire’s courtyard, with all the courtyards in Paris to choose from, disappeared without a trace.

  TWELVE

  ‘Just because Belvoire has hired men to look for Brother Tin-Tin,’ said January, two hours later as Freytag – not a hair out of place – handed him a small cup of very black coffee in Daniel’s impeccable Louis XV library, ‘doesn’t mean he didn’t have a hand in Tin-Tin murdering Philippe – if it was in fact Celestin who murdered his brother.’ The side of his mouth had begun to swell painfully but he didn’t care. The coffee was like new life in his veins. ‘Or that, if he didn’t approve of or plan such a killing, he wouldn’t nevertheless shelter an heir who’ll …’ He bit off the words, and his thought.

  Daniel said nothing for a time. In the lamplight he looked as if he’d aged ten years, or walked a very long distance alone.

  At last he looked up from the inky deeps of his own cup, and said, ‘Who’ll give him grandchildren?’

  Freytag set down the tray on the library table, and January saw the worried glance the valet gave his master as he faded silently into the darkness of the silent house. ‘Who won’t disgrace the family with scandal?’ In Daniel’s quiet voice January read the fear that he had lived with for three weeks now: that it was his flamboyant affaire with the young nobleman which had triggered the events leading to the young man’s death. His ‘corruption’ of his friend, which had stood in the way of the orderly succession of property and power.

  ‘Belvoire should give himself airs about scandal,’ sniffed Ayasha. She leaned from her seat in the window, which stood open to the gluey night, and held a fragment of sweet cake coaxingly out to Musette. ‘His great-grandfather kept a harem of young girls in a house outside of Vincennes that would have made a Tunisian pimp blush.’ Like the valet, Ayasha looked not a whit the worse for the fact that it was now close to dawn. She’d patched and stitched January’s cuts when he’d made his way back to the Rue de l’Aube, and had agreed at once with his suggestion that they proceed immediately to Daniel’s rather than wait until daylight: ‘If you lie down now you’ll be so stiff you won’t be able to move. And you know Daniel will still be awake.’

  She’d been right, of course. Their friend had been reading in his library, like an enormous peacock in a dressing gown of Oriental magnificence – and even sitting still long enough to drink a cup of coffee (did Freytag ever sleep?) and outline the events that had befallen him since he’d taken up his vigil in the Rue Notre Dame des Victoires, January could feel every bruised muscle of his torso and limbs freezing up hard. The walk home would be agony.

  ‘The men could have been following the girl,’ he said after a time. ‘They could be her relatives or friends. Or they could have been hired by Celestin—’

  ‘Or by Celestin’s creditors.’ With a motion of his heavy shoulders, like a man temporarily setting a burden aside, Daniel raised his head. The desk behind him, January saw, was littered, not with the medieval and Turkish jewels that were the delight of his idle hours, but with letters in Anne’s clear, rounded hand. ‘From what Philippe told me about the rows between Tin-Tin and their father, the boy was forever coming back from Paris pleading for money to cover his debts. He must owe every gambling-hell in town. The local brotherhood of the galloping bones will have greeted his elevation to the status of heir with stately pavanes of delight. They wouldn’t welc
ome his being guillotined – and they would have been in a good position to help him move the body to wherever in Paris he chose.’

  ‘Bravos in the pay of gamblers would have killed me,’ pointed out January.

  ‘And you were being followed,’ added Ayasha, ‘this afternoon … yesterday afternoon,’ she corrected herself, with a glance at the windows. ‘I saw no one tonight, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t find you later. Or that they weren’t waiting for you in the Rue Notre Dame – maybe to see if you’d find what they hadn’t been able to.’

  January was silent for a time. ‘I saw them first – or thought I saw them,’ he said slowly, ‘sometime after we left the Place des Victoires. If someone heard our enquiries and got word to Celestin – or Madame la Comtesse – they had plenty of time to start watching out for us. I’m not exactly hard to miss. Whoever it was I encountered tonight,’ he added, gingerly touching the back of his head where a knot the size of a quail egg was developing, ‘had enough money to hire a carriage, and knew on whose doorstep to throw me.’

  ‘Benjamin, I am …’ Daniel stretched out a hand to January as if in supplication, then turned away. ‘I call you my friend, and nearly get you killed—’

  January waved the words aside. ‘We didn’t know,’ he said, and added, ‘we still don’t know.’

  ‘They could have killed you,’ persisted Daniel, tears of remorse flooding his tired eyes. ‘Easily. And they may next time. I couldn’t stand …’ He broke off, turned his face aside.

  I couldn’t stand to be responsible for another friend’s death …

  Musette whined gently at his feet, and he lifted her to his lap, staring almost sightlessly into the distance.

  ‘If you go there again …’

  ‘We may not need to.’ January reached across to the desk – the muscles in his back cramping like the pincers of the Inquisition at his movement – and drew to himself a sheet of notepaper and a pencil. ‘Look at this. Does this look like any work you’re familiar with, my nightingale?’

  Ayasha came to look over his shoulder at the sketch of the diamond moon and three stars. ‘I haven’t seen any jeweler’s work,’ January said, ‘that makes the moon that thin, or the stars four-pointed like that—’

  ‘The Vicomtesse d’Orles has a necklace with stars of that design. She wore it to a fitting.’

  ‘Darling!’ protested Daniel in horror. ‘In the afternoon?’

  ‘She wanted to make sure the dress matched the jewels.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks! I’ll wager she wanted to impress whoever it was she was with – who was she with?’

  ‘Madame Bovinne, the wife of that fellow who makes boots for the army.’

  ‘What did I tell you? The jeweler is Reuben Gemier,’ Daniel added, leaning around her shoulder. ‘His shop is in the Palais Royale – D’Orles seldom buys from anyone else. Gemier’s an official in my father’s synagogue, his work’s been pointed out to me a hundred times. And you’re quite right, he does make the moon like that.’

  ‘Very good.’ Ayasha finished off the last sweet biscuit, and the bitter dregs of her coffee. ‘He’ll open up shop in …’ She regarded the gray light of the window with a calculating eye.

  ‘He isn’t going to go telling anyone the names of his customers,’ Daniel warned. ‘Particularly since so many of them aren’t ladies of the court. He lives in terror that one of his court customers will encounter one of his demi-mondaines in the street …’

  ‘’amaq.’ Ayasha gave him a pat on the shoulder and a brilliant grin. ‘Foolish one. I’m going to ask the assistant at his shop, of course – on behalf of my mistress.’ Her wave seemed to conjure this fictitious lady from the shadow and candle-gleam. ‘Who will pay anything to learn if her husband has purchased such a moon and three stars for some trashy nymph of the pavement—’

  Daniel broke into a tired smile in return, and he took her hand and kissed it. ‘Beautiful nightingale,’ he declared, producing a roll of banknotes from his dressing-gown pocket and tucking it into her hand, ‘so will I.’

  1839

  ‘They still behind us?’ January glanced around him at as much of the swampy woods as he could without visibly turning in the saddle. Hannibal, under cover of a fit of coughing, dug a handkerchief and what looked suspiciously like a small palm-mirror – half the size of a silver dollar, such as gamblers sometimes used to pick up signals from confederates – from the pocket of his dilapidated coat.

  ‘Well, may crows devour him,’ said the fiddler after a moment, following a second – less convincing – cough that brought the palmed mirror close to his eyes. ‘I doubt I could see a fire-breathing dragon at this distance and in this light. How far are we from town?’

  ‘Four miles back to Bayou St John. Their horses can’t be any fresher than our own.’

  ‘Solvitur ambulando,’ agreed Hannibal, and delivered a stout kick to Roux’s ribs. ‘Or cursatio, as the case may be.’

  Though no pursuing horsemen galloped up onto the road to follow them into town – and given the marshy terrain, January was fairly certain that even Voltaire and Roux could outrun the hottest-blooded thoroughbred in Kentucky under those conditions – January was careful not to return to his home. He repaired instead to Hannibal’s current lodging, which was in the attic of the Broadhorn saloon at the back of town not far from the basin, a district known as the Swamp for moral as well as topographical reasons. While the proprietress, a heavily-built, bulldog-faced woman named Kentucky Williams, greeted Hannibal in a fashion that made it plain that he was expected in her chamber after closing time, January stepped diffidently to the rear door of the barroom and signed to one of the men who worked inside. He would, of course, have risked a beating every bit as bad as the one he’d gotten in Paris for venturing into territory hallowed to white men.

  ‘Any chance I could get a couple of notes taken into town?’ he asked, in the German that was the middle-aged ‘bar-boy’s’ native language, and produced the last of his cash.

  Conrad hesitated, but Mrs Williams, one beefy arm around Hannibal’s shoulders, called out, ‘Yeah, go ahead, we ain’t that busy yet.’ January scribbled a message on a notebook page to Rose, warning her to take Baby John, Zizi-Marie, and Gabriel, leave the house at once and take shelter with Olympe, and another to Lieutenant Shaw.

  ‘If Olympe is right,’ he said, as he and Hannibal climbed the rickety outside stair to the gable window – the attic’s only means of ingress, ‘and there’s gold involved, it looks like somebody besides Brooke was interested in it.’

  ‘If there’s gold involved.’ Like a skeleton in his frayed linen shirtsleeves, Hannibal routed around in the shabby crates that ranged along one side of the low rafters and unearthed half a dozen candle-ends, the attic being nearly dark at this hour. ‘You only have Olympe’s word about the gold – or the word of whatever it is that lives in that black bottle of hers.’

  ‘Do you disbelieve her?’

  ‘Gods, no! Any idea who that was that followed us?’ He lighted the candles, adjusted the broken chunk of shaving mirror balanced on another crate, and dipped his razor in the nearest rain bucket.

  ‘I suspect it was the men who passed us on the shell road,’ said January slowly. ‘Americans – Kaintucks – filibusters, they looked like.’ He used the local term for American freebooters who took advantage of the current political upheavals in the Caribbean to organize raiding parties to foreign soil, secure in the knowledge that the governments of Mexico, Nicaragua, New Grenada or Spanish Cuba were too disorganized and weak to retaliate. ‘I could be wrong. And anyone can hire river pirates or brawlers anywhere in town, for any purpose.’

  ‘Anyone being perhaps Sir John Oldmixton himself?’

  Through the unglazed opening in the wall – which served the purpose of both door and window – voices drifted up from the saloon and the yard. A man shouted perdition to all goat-fucking Irish; a woman yelled, ‘You give that back, you bony-assed bitch!’ Movement on the floor beside him drew Janua
ry’s attention and he used his notebook to swat a roach the size of a baby mouse: the attic was in a sort of annex over the Broadhorn’s kitchen, and though blessed with enough heat in the winter months to keep Hannibal from freezing, it was unspeakable in the summer months.

  January had slept in worse places.

  ‘If his murder had anything to do with the papers he was carrying,’ he said slowly, ‘or with Chitimacha Plantation, or the gold that Olympe saw in her vision. I didn’t know Gerry O’Dwyer well,’ he went on. ‘For all I know, he may have had a good reason not to come back to Paris when the fighting was over, in the summer of 1830. He may not even have known my friend’s wife was accused of a crime of which he could have cleared her. In fact, he may have sent her a message, either then or later, that was never delivered. But someone killed him. And finding out who he knew in New Orleans will lead us somewhere – and with luck,’ he finished grimly, ‘it’ll do so before an innocent woman is hanged because she can’t prove she was innocently asleep.’

  A hundred dollars. January stared out past the flicker of candlelight in the stifling attic, listening to the last of the Broadhorn’s customers either staggering on their way down Perdidio Street or copulating with the four whores who had cribs on the other side of the yard. The last of the evening, to judge by the quiet in the yard itself. Hannibal had gone downstairs at about ten to play poker for the house, after helping January piece together the beginnings of a rough list of who they knew who lived out on Bayou St John – ‘Although it’s perfectly possible,’ pointed out the fiddler, ‘that Brooke was simply meeting someone out there because he’d rather not do so in town. It may be that he was being followed as well.’

  A hundred dollars and ‘papers’. And presumably a large sum in Bank of England stock.

  Was whatever Oldmixton could tell him worth being drawn into whatever scheme the spymaster had going? For that matter, would Oldmixton tell him the truth? Had he told him the truth about anything so far?