Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man Of Color (9 page)

The Creoles muttered and whispered among themselves in French. January heard a man start to say in English, “She's only a ...” The concluding words, nigger whore, remained unsaid, probably more because the speaker realized that saying them would damage his chances with the dead woman's fellow demimondaines than out of any consideration of good taste. Old Xavier Peralta turned his head. “She was a free woman of this city, sir,” he said quietly. “She is entitled to this city's justice.”

“I agree,” said Ivanhoe. “But there is no need for us to unmask to tell you what we have seen tonight.”

Shaw scratched his unshaven jaw. “Well,” he said in his mild tenor voice, “in fact there is.” And he aimed another long stream of tobacco juice into the nearest spittoon, missing by only inches—not bad at the distance, January thought.

“Malarkey!” barked Henry VIII. Only men were visible in the doorway, but January could see the silken bevies of women grouped in the other two entries, watching with eyes that held not love, but worried calculation, like the occupants of a sinking vessel computing the square footage of the rafts.

From the parlor a wailing shriek sliced the air: “Angelique, my baby! My angel! Oh dear God, my baby!” Other voices murmured, soothing, weeping, calming.

January's eyes returned to the faces of the men. It was absurd to suppose the murderer was still in the ballroom, or anywhere in the Salle d'Orleans. Henri Viellard certainly wasn't, having beaten a hasty retreat through the passageway to the concealing skirts of his mother, sisters, and aunts, who would be willing like any group of Creoles to perjure themselves for the good of the family. William Granger likewise seemed, as the Kaintucks put it, to have absquatulated. In fact only a small group of men remained in a room that had been crammed with a preponderance of them moments before. The ladies in the Thedtre d'Orleans must have wondered why their menfolk had developed so sudden a craving for their company.

January hoped this man Shaw had the wits to set a guard in the Theatre's lobby as well as in the court and at the doors from the gaming rooms to the Rue Orleans outside.

Augustus Mayerling was one of those who remained, arms folded, at the rear of the group. His students, perforce, stood their ground as well, unwilling to have it said of them that they fled while their master remained, although a number of them didn't look happy about it.

“This is ridiculous,” declared Ivanhoe. “You overstep your authority, young man.”

“Well, maybe I do,” agreed Shaw and absentmind-edly scratched his chest under his coat. “But if n you was to be murdered, Mr. Destrehan, I'm sure you'd like to know that the police was keepin' all suspects and witnesses in the same buildin' until they could be asked about it.”

“Not if it meant all but accusing my friends of the deed!” The Knight of the Oak scowled darkly under his helmet's slatted visor at this offhandedly correct deduction of his identity. “Not if it meant needlessly impugning their reputations, running the risk of exposing their names to the newspapers—”

“Now, who said a thing about newspapers?”

“Don't be a fool, man,” snapped Bouille, who from his well-publicized quarrel with Granger over the past few months had reason to know all about newspapers. He seemed to have either drunk himself to the point where he didn't care about the risk to his reputation, or more probably simply had no concept that his reputation could be at risk. “Of course the newspapers will get any list you make. And publish it.”

“Froissart,” ordered a truly awful Leatherstocking, “send one of your people to the police station and get Captain Tremouille and let us end this comedy.”

“ 'Fraid the captain's off this evenin',” said Shaw.

“He'll be at the LaFrenniere ball,” said Peralta quietly. He turned back to Shaw, the gaslight glittering on the lace at his throat and wrists. “I understand your position, Lieutenant, but surely you must understand ours. There are men here who cannot afford to have their names dragged through the American newspapers, which, you must admit, display very little discretion in their choice of either subject matter or terms of expression. If you cannot take our information without demanding our names, I fear we must stand on our rights as the leading citizens of this town and refuse you our assistance.”

Under a narrow brow and a hanging forelock of grimy hair, Shaw's pale eyes glinted. He spat again and said nothing.

Quietly, January said, “Lieutenant?” He wasn't sure how the man would take a suggestion from a colored, but every second the impasse lasted increased the chance of someone finding a good reason to forget the whole matter. The man at least seemed to be willing to investigate a placee's death, which was something.

Shaw considered him for a moment, lashless gray eyes enigmatic under a brow like an outlaw horse's, then walked to where he stood.

Very softly January said, “The women will know who's who. Have a man in the room take down color and kind of costume when these men give their testimonies masked and match up the descriptions with the women later.”

Shaw studied him for a moment, then said, “You're the fella found the body.”

January nodded, then remembered to lower his eyes and say, “Yes, sir.”

“Froissart tells me you kept him talkin' and kept the place from bein' blockaded.”

January felt his face heat with anger at the master of ceremonies' casual shifting of criminal blame. He forced calm into his voice. “That wasn't the way it happened, but I can't prove that. He was going to have the body taken up to an attic, clean up the room, and not call the police until morning. Maybe not call the police at all.” He wondered for a moment whether this man would have preferred it that way . . . but in that case he'd have found some reason not to come quickly. “I kept him talking to give my sister time to bring you here.”

“Ah.” The policeman nodded. His face, ugly as an Ohio River gargoyle, was as inexpressive as a plank. “ 'Xplains why a private citizen all dressed up like Maid Marian brung the news, 'stead of an employee of the house.” His English would have earned January the beating of his life from his schoolmasters or his mother, but he guessed the man's French was worse. “Now I think on it, 'xplains why anyone brought the news at all. So Miss Janvier's your sister?”

“Half-sister. Sir.”

“Beautiful gal.” The words might have been spoken of a Ming vase or a Brittany sunset, an admiring compliment without a touch of the lascivious. He turned back to the assembled planters, bankers, and merchants crowded in the ballroom door. “Gentlemen,” he said, “as a representative of equal justice in this city, I can't say I approve of divagatin' from the law, but I understand yore reasons, and I'm bound to say I accepts ”em.“ He shoved back the too-long forelock with fingers like cotton-loom spindles. ”With your permission, then, I'll note down what any of you saw anonymously, and I thank you for doin' your duty as citizens in figurin' out the circumstances of this poor girl's death and findin' the man what killed her. I will ask that you be patient, since this'll take some little time."

There was an angry murmur from the ballroom. January saw several of the men—mostly Americans—glance toward the curtained passageway and guessed they'd have a number of desertions the moment Shaw was out of sight. “Mr. Froissart,” said Shaw softly, “could you be so kind as to lend us your office for the interviews? It'll likely take most of the night, there bein” so many. Would it trouble you too much to make coffee for the folks here? Boechter,“ he added, motioning one of his constables near, ”see to it nobody wanders in off n the street, would you?"

Or wanders out,
thought January, though he guessed Constable Boechter wasn't going to be much of a deterrent if Peralta or Destrehan grew impatient and decided to quit the premises. Shaw motioned him over and said, “Maestro? I'd purely take it as a favor if while you're waitin' you'd play some music, give 'em somethin' to listen to. Sounds silly, but music doth have charms an' all that.”

January nodded. He wondered whether it was chance, or whether this upriver barbarian truly knew the Creole mind well enough to understand that by turning the nuisance into a social occasion with food, coffee, and music, he would keep his witnesses in the room. “If it's as well for you, Dominique and I can wait to be interviewed last. Sir. You may want to get through as many of these as you can before they get bored and start walking out.”

The lieutenant smiled for the first time, and it changed his whole slab-sided face. “You may have a point, Maestro. I think I'll need to talk to your sister first off, to get the shape of what it is I'm askin'.” He spoke softly enough to exclude not only the men grouped in the ballroom doorway, but Froissart and his own constables. “I take it your sister's here with her man?”

“He'll have gone by this time,” said January. “Half the men here tonight just slipped back through to the Theatre; their wives and mothers are going to swear they were with them all night on that side. I doubt there's anything you can do about that.”

Shaw spat again—he had yet to make his target— but other than that kept his opinion to himself. “Well, we can only do what we can. You may be waitin' a piece. . . . What is your name?”

“January. Benjamin January.” He handed him his card.

Shaw slipped it into the sagging pocket of his green corduroy coat. “Like they say, it's the custom of the country.”

From his post on the dais, January could watch the entire long ballroom and hear the surge and babble of talk as now one masked gentleman, now another, exited for questioning. Those who really didn't want to be questioned slipped off the moment Shaw was out of sight, but the Kalmuck's instinct had been a wise one: Romulus Valle replenished the collation on the tables with fresh oysters, beignets, and tarts newly baked from the market, and the somber glory of coffee, and this, combined with the light, calming airs of Mozart and Haydn, Schubert, and Rossini, created a partylike atmosphere. No Creole, January knew, was going to leave a party, certainly not if doing so would rob him of the chance to talk about it later. Secure in the knowledge that they were masked, wouldn't be identified, and that none of this really had anything to do with them, most stayed, and in fact more than a few returned from the Theatre rather than lose out on the novelty.

Augustus Mayerling set up a faro bank in a corner and systematically fleeced everyone in sight. A slighdy spindle-shanked Apollo got into a furious argument with one of the several Uncases present and had to be separated by three of Mayerling's students before another duel ensued. Jean Bouille quoted to everyone who would listen the exact content of the letters William Granger had written to the Courier about him, and verbatim accounts of what he had written in return in the Bee.

The older women like Agnes Pellicot, and the daughters they had brought to show, had the best time: The men took the opportunity of a new experience to flirt with the young girls, and the mothers gossiped to their hearts' content. January reflected that his own mother would burst a blood vessel to think that she hadn't deigned to show up tonight and so had missed something her cronies would be discussing for weeks.

Only now and then could Euphrasie Dreuze's weeping be heard. Once Hannibal turned his head a little and remarked, “That was a good one.” And when January frowned, puzzled, he explained, “You have to have lungs like an opera singer to make your grief carry through two closed doors and the corridor.”

“She did lose her daughter,” said January.

“She lost a son in the cholera last summer and went to a ball the same night she heard the news. Got up in black like an undertaker's mute, true, leaving streaks of it on every chair in the Pontchartrain Ballroom and telling everyone present how prostrate she was with grief, but she stayed till the last waltz and went out for oysters afterward. I was there.”

Old Xavier Peralta evidently hadn't been apprised of this piece of gossip, however, for he gathered up a cup of coffee and slipped quietly from the ballroom; January saw him turn in the direction of the corridor from the lobby. Whatever he felt about the woman during negotiations for her daughter's contract, grief was grief.

His was the only sign of bereavement. Men sipped whisky from silver hip flasks or from the tiny bottles concealed in the heads of their canes and flirted with the girls. Probably fearing that he'd be asked to pay for all four if they stayed, Monsieur Froissart released Jacques and Uncle Bichet, but after he was questioned by the guards, Hannibal returned with another bottle of champagne and continued to accompany January's arias and sonatinas with the air of a man amusing himself. January suspected that the other two had only gone as far as the kitchens anyway, where they would sit trading speculations with Romulus Valle until almost morning.

As people moved in and out of the ballroom or through the lobby past the doorways, January kept watching the crowd, searching for the golden buckskin gown and the silly crown of black cock feathers. It would have been insanity for her to remain, but he could not put from his mind the fleeting impression he had had of her presence in the ballroom after he'd begun to play; could not forget the hard desperation in her eyes as she'd said, I must see her . . . I MUST. He wondered what she so urgently needed to discuss with the dead woman, and whether Angelique's death would make matters better for her, or worse.

Taking his advice—or perhaps simply following the dictates of logic—Shaw questioned all the men first and turned them out of the building, then the women, who were quite content to remain; though after the departure of the men most of the buffet vanished as well. Monsieur Froissart was under no illusions about which group constituted his more important clientele. A few gentlemen waited for their placees in the lobby downstairs or in the gambling rooms. Others, conscious of wives, mothers, and fiancees in the other side of the building, simply left instructions with coachmen—or in some cases employees of the ballroom—to see the ladies home. Few of the placees complained or expressed either indignation or annoyance. They were used to looking after themselves.