Dead and Buried (10 page)

‘Mon Dieu!’ Madeleine Mayerling glanced over her shoulder at her husband. ‘That was the man—’

‘Indeed.’ Both returned their gazes to January. The sword-master cocked his narrow, bird-like head. ‘You behold us agog.’

‘What happened at Trulove’s?’

‘Well, she knew them both.’ Madeleine set her glass down, folded her hands on her sprig-muslin lap. ‘That was abundantly clear.’

‘Who knew them both?’

‘Isobel Deschamps.’

It was January’s turn to raise his brows. ‘Celestine Deschamps’s daughter?’ Like Hannibal yesterday, he experienced a momentary flash of wonder and regret –
where ARE the snows of yesteryear?
– that the grave and sweet-faced French Creole damsel he had tutored in piano was already old enough to be causing near-duels at birthday balls in Milneburgh. Yet the autumn that he’d taken that honey-haired schoolgirl through Mozart marches and light-footed Austrian waltz-tunes, she was already bubbling with plans for her debut:
I have a fitting for my dress for the Mayor’s Ball; I must go with Maman to buy gloves to go with my slippers
 . . . In time the piano lessons had been discontinued, as Celestine Deschamps – just emerged from full mourning for her husband – shepherded the girl to dancing masters and corsetières in preparation for her introduction to adult society.

That was the year, January recalled, that the government of the United States had finally cleared the Red River in the north-west of the state for steamboat navigation, quintupling the value of the Deschamps plantations in Natchitoches Parish and transforming the pretty young widow and her daughters from modestly well-to-do to outright rich overnight.

Of course, it was expected that Isobel would marry well.

‘She has only just returned from Paris,’ went on Madame Mayerling. ‘So it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that she encountered both of them there. The Viscount and Lord Montague, I mean.’ Something of January’s own thoughts must have snagged in her mind, for her dark brows puckered as she heard her own words.

‘Not beyond the realm of
possibility
, no,’ January said, answering her expression. ‘But what is the
probability
that two men she knew – and knew well enough to have them fight over her – would
both
come to New Orleans during the hot season, when even the Devil is still away on vacation?’

There was a little silence, broken only by the rising thrum of cicadas in the courtyard plane-tree with the cessation of the rain, and the voice of a servant-woman in the kitchen downstairs.

‘Did you see what took place?’

‘Oh, yes. I was speaking with her only moments before.’ A shadow of remembered anger flickered through the young woman’s eyes. ‘As to what happened . . . She turned her head, said, “Oh,
peste
!” and begged my pardon and tried to get out of the room. You know how crowded it was that night. Before she could reach the door, Blessinghurst stepped in front of her and took her by the hands, the way a man does who thinks he is entitled to do so. Isobel tried to get free, but he was very earnest, like a man in love . . . Only, a man who truly loves will not do such a thing to a girl at a ball, when she must either stand still and let him talk, or make a scene in public.’

‘And Foxford broke in?’

Madame Mayerling nodded decisively. ‘I was on my way to do so, but he was before me. He said something like, “Sir, it must have escaped your notice that this young lady was on the way from the room.”’ A born mimic, she captured not only the accent of Foxford’s perfect public-school English, but also the stiff posture of an offended scion of the aristocracy. ‘Isobel tried to pull her hands away, and Blessinghurst would not release them, and that was not at all how he acted to the other ladies that evening, young or otherwise. He made some slighting answer to the boy and tried to draw Isobel aside . . .’

She frowned again, putting events into order as if sorting out a hand of cards. ‘And do you know, after that first instant Isobel did not look at young Foxford. She looked away, like this . . .’

Not the gesture of an eighteen-year-old girl embarrassed at a scene between gentlemen. It was, January thought, almost like a flinch of fear.

‘She said, “Gerry, no.”’

‘She called him Gerry?’

‘Even so. Foxford – only it was not until later that my Aunt Clothilde told me his title – put his hand on Blessinghurst’s arm, and in turning to meet him Blessinghurst let Isobel go, and I got her out of the room, in spite of the crowd.’ January guessed that, as a well-off young matron, Madeleine Mayerling would have far less diffidence about pushing her way to the door than a shy girl in her third season.

‘In the lobby I asked her if I should fetch her mother. She was shaking all over and ashen with distress. Now, I would not put it past Celestine Deschamps to push this British Lord’s addresses at her later – depending on how rich he turns out to be – but if there was a scene brewing in the ballroom she would, of course, get her out of there right away.’

‘So you knew Blessinghurst is a lord?’

‘Oh, yes. He’d left cards on everyone in town about a week before that, and Augustus introduced us earlier that evening. He’d had a lesson with him already at the
salle d’epée
. Everyone was saying how exquisite his manners were, and half a dozen of my aunts’ friends are pursuing him for their daughters. I found him . . .’ She fished momentarily for the right word. ‘I found him
obsequious
, myself. But men often are when they’re on the catch for heiresses.’

January nodded, recalling Martin Quennell gamely sacrificing a hundred dollars’ worth of clothes to the pursuit.

‘He always seems to have a great deal of money—’

‘He wins a lot of that in the gambling-rooms,’ remarked Augustus.

‘Yes, well, so do you,
liebling
.’ She reached up to touch his hand. ‘It was, as I said, the only time I saw him behave in a manner less than perfectly correct.’

Hannibal spoke up. ‘Did he say why he was in New Orleans at this season?’

‘Traveling for his health, he said. Which, when one thinks about it, is the last thing one is likely to find in New Orleans before the first frost.’ She tilted the lemonade pitcher, topping up their glasses, and offered the plate of teacakes. January took one, knowing it would be a long night at the Countess’s. Hannibal shook his head.

‘Would you do me a favor, Madame?’ asked January, after a time of thought. ‘Might I prevail on you to call on Mademoiselle Deschamps, and learn from her, if you can, why it is that she tried to flee Lord Montague on sight, and how she comes to call young Foxford by his Christian name?’

‘
Prevail
upon me?’ The velvety brown eyes sparkled with pleasure. ‘My dear M’sieu, after what you have told me of murders and intrigues, you would have to confine me to keep me from it!’

January laughed. ‘I kiss your hands and feet, Madame, with your husband’s kind permission. Was Derryhick there that night, by the way? Do you know?’

Madeleine and Augustus exchanged glances, questioning and shrugging. If Monday had been the Foxford party’s first evening in New Orleans, January reflected, neither would have known who Derryhick was, as they’d known Blessinghurst. And a plain ‘Mister’, be he ever so wealthy with mis-inherited gains, would not catch gossip’s attention the way even an impoverished Viscount would. Mayerling said, ‘Certainly, no one stood out among those who drew Foxford away from Lord Montague, as a traveling companion would do. The man may have been in the hotel’s gambling room and heard nothing of the matter.’

‘I imagine if he had been present at all,’ said Hannibal, ‘I would have seen him, and I didn’t. And that,’ he added, almost to himself, ‘is probably just as well.’

EIGHT

E
ven in the hot season, Saturday night was the liveliest of the week at the Countess’s. Little J scurried to and from the kitchen with bottles of expensive champagne for the men and glasses for the girls, adeptly switching the wine that the men had poured out for their
inamoratas pro tem
with identical glasses of apple juice, diluted with soda water to the same color. A gentlemen might think he wanted to share champagne (at three times its market value) with the girl of his choice, but January knew why the deception was necessary. ‘Trust me,’ he later explained to Rose, ‘you don’t want to see any of those girls actually drunk.’

January played, watched, and listened without seeming to, and when his banker, Hubert Granville – for whom he had done a little investigating at the beginning of summer – glanced askance at him from between the lovely Sybilla’s breasts, he only beamed a greeting of wordless friendliness and went back to ‘The Lad With His Sidelocks Curled’. If whorehouse etiquette forbade the piano player from recognizing any of the men who came to Countess Mazzini’s to gamble, fornicate, and shout at each other about the annexation of Texas in an atmosphere of cheap patchouli and cigar smoke, in return it prevented any white man from officially taking notice of who was providing the music.

Neither Martin Quennell nor the wealthy and ill-mannered Mr Schurtz put in an appearance that night. Young Mr Foxy Red Dominic Lloyd came in late and very drunk, and proceeded to get drunker – an expensive proposition at the Countess’s.

‘Do I judge correctly that Mr Lloyd’s courtship of Miss Schurtz’s dowry has been derailed by a mere bank clerk?’ January asked Hannibal later, when he emerged at the end of a very long evening to find the fiddler on the back steps, trading after-hours jokes in German with Trinchen and Nenchen.

After he had kissed both girls goodnight amid compliments and snatches of Goethe’s more romantic endeavors – ‘
kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn
’ – he untied one of Nenchen’s pink-striped ribbons from around his neck and said, ‘Bank clerk? According to the lovely Nenchen, Mr Quennell is an
entrepreneur
who has used his position at the Mississippi and Balize to purchase town lots out beyond Dryades Street . . . which have tripled in value since that area became part of the Second Municipality in March.’

‘Using what for money, I wonder?’

‘Well you may. Goodnight, goodnight, beautiful ladies,’ he added, as Auntie Saba and her children came down the back steps, and Hughie-Boy – a huge hook-nosed ruffian who slept in a little room beneath the stairs – locked up the door behind them. ‘
Dusky like night, but night with all her stars
 . . .’

‘That fiddler a friend of yours, Big J?’ the cook demanded, laughing. ‘You better not let the Countess see him.’

‘An unforgiving woman, the Countess.’ Hannibal shook his head and sighed. ‘And, if I may be excused for criticizing a lady in her profession, a sadly unromantic one.’

They turned right at the rear corner of the house and followed its wall toward the bluer darkness that was all that was visible of the starlit street. The fingernail moon had set early, and in this neighborhood, far out along Prytania Street, the house lots were huge and widely-spaced. For a hundred yards in any direction of the handsome pink-brick house, cypress and oak grew, as they had grown when the Houma and Choctaw had still camped on the edges of the then-walled town.

It was nearly four in the morning. Even sin slept.

Hannibal went on: ‘From what Fräulein Nenchen tells me, Schurtz seems to prefer a man who can get him real estate at half the going price to the hard-working owner of a cotton press. Quennell will laugh uproariously at Schurtz’s jokes into the bargain – Trinchen says she hadn’t thought anyone could make a dirty story boring, but evidently that’s the one talent Schurtz has – and Miss Schurtz has expressed a decided preference for young Quennell, who has presented her so far with a necklace of pearls and a Chinese shawl. I suspect either Beauvais Quennell or the Burial Society had better look to their account books. Did you find out anything further about the sinister Blessinghurst from the kitchen help?’

‘Only what the girls have said of him.’ January opened his hands, like a magician would to prove them empty. ‘He’s generous, lavish with money, and universally charming, when charm will get him what he wants. Elspie – the parlormaid – says when she refused to kiss him he took the kiss by force, and not playful force, either. He said if she told the Countess about it, he would charge Elspie with the theft of his watch, and the Countess would have her sold.’

‘
Is
Elspie a slave?’

‘No,’ said January. ‘She reported the matter privately to the Countess, and they’re both pretending she didn’t. The man’s a good customer, and neither of them wants to upset Marie-Venise, who’s one of their best “specials”. When I go to the Cabildo tomorrow – today,’ he amended, with resigned regret, ‘this afternoon, I’ll mention what we’ve learned about Blessinghurst to Shaw. Though by that time I suspect that whatever Viscount Foxford was really doing Thursday night, he’ll have admitted it after a few hours in the Calaboso. I don’t think he’ll get much chiding from his uncle . . . Mr Droudge wouldn’t try to blackmail him, would he? Threaten to tell his mother he’d been investigating some of Bourbon Street’s gamier pleasures?’