Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard (14 page)

“A pity Mama put in an appearance before we could get a description out of him.” Hannibal checked his notes. “I observe that in addition to Celie's name Isaak also mentioned their mother's-interesting, given the reason he was in hiding in the first place. And Mama, of course, was absent from home that night.”

“And evidently hadn't told Antoine where she was going, or when she'd be back,” mused January. "Curious.

Though if she was behind it and didn't want to be placed on the scene of the death itself, I don't imagine she'll be difficult to trace. In fact, she'll be cudgeling her brain for some way to mention casually the thirty-seven people who saw her in the hours before her son's death."

“Did they?”

“I don't know,” said January. “I can only assume she did to Shaw, since he made no attempt to arrest her as well. But I'm certainly going to find out.”

Saturday, 28 June

M. Mathurin Jumon

Rue St. Louis

New Orleans

Dear M. Jumon:

In my investigation of the horrible accusation that has been leveled against Madame Celie Jumon, your name was mentioned as a possible source of information about your nephew Isaak Jumon, of whom, I have been told, you were quite fond. I understand that you have probably already spoken to Madame Jumon's attorney, a M. Vilhardouin, but it is my understanding that M. Vilhardouin is carrying on his investigation only insofar as concerns Madame Jumon and not the woman who is accused along with her, a Madame Corbier. By investigating on behalf of both, I hope to gain a clearer insight into the circumstances of your nephew's death.

Might I trouble you for an hour of your time, at your convenience, in order that I may learn further particulars about your nephew that might point out some direction for further investigation?

Please let me know a time and venue most convenient for a meeting.

Many thanks for your help and consideration in this matter.

Your obedient servant, Benjamin January, fmc.

At the subscription ball for the St. Margaret Society, held that night in the Theatre d'Orleans, January took the opportunity to more closely observe Mathurin Jumon, that consummately evil man. He saw, as he had seen Thursday night at the Pritchards' party, only a tall, powerfully built man of an age only a few years greater than his own, whose dark-browed handsomeness blended with the black of his well-cut mourning attire, assiduous in attendance on his brilliant mother. Madame Cordelia Jumon appeared to have come to the ball sheerly in order to be congratulated by all her acquaintances for garnering the strength to do so: she spent most of it seated in one of the Theatre's stage boxes, sipping the negus and punch her son brought to her and dissecting a piece of plum cake into smaller and smaller pieces without ever actually eating any. Since the musicians' dais stood on the stage, ensconced in imitation archways from last spring's performance of Barbarossa, January was able to hear a good deal of what was said by the assorted ladies who ascended to participate in Madame Cordelia's little court, at least between dances when his concentration wasn't divided between the beauty of the music and the pain in his shoulders.

“Dearest, are you sure you're well enough?” That was Elaine Destrehan, one of the most prominent of the Creole matrons.

“Nonsense, child, of course I. am.” A martyred smile and a discreet cough. “I'm as strong as a horse.” A beautifully calculated gesture that implied imminent collapse, the Theatre's gaslights glimmering on the two-inch band of diamonds and pearls worn over the glove of sable kid. Most women came out of mourning for their children in three months, but Madame Jumon had merely exchanged crepe and bombazine for black silk, which formed an admirable backdrop to the diamonds she wore. “My dear Mathurin looks after me so well.”

Her dear Mathurin, January noticed, did not, as so many of the men present did, disappear into the lobby and thence through the discreetly curtained passage that led to the Salle d'Orleans next door, where a Blue Ribbon Ball was in full swing. The wives of January's fellow musicians in Paris, or of the artists who'd lived in the same building on the Rue de I'Aube-scarcely missish women-had not been able to credit it when he'd told them of the Blue Ribbon Balls: not that the free colored demimonde would have such entertainments, but that they were so frequently held within a hundred feet of the respectable subscription balls. “And they countenance that?” his own wife, Ayasha, had asked incredulously. “That the mistresses of their husbands and brothers-and fathers, ya-Allah!-will be dancing in . . . What? Another room?”

“It's actually the building next door,” said January, a little apologetically. “But the same man owns both buildings, and they're connected by a passageway. It's the custom of the country.”

“It is my belief that the men in your country all need a good lesson,” Ayasha had replied. At the memory of that hook-nosed brown face, that sable ocean of hair braided and pinned in halfhearted imitation of a white woman's weaker tresses, January's heart still constricted in his breast. She had added, with a malicious glance sidelong, “And the women, too.”

He brought his mind back from the memory, as he had perforce learned to do. The music helped, the bittersweet solace of a Mozart waltz: yearning, parting, senti mental regret, layered like a soupe anglaise. His back and shoulders ached like fire, and his heart hurt, cut to ribbons by the knife of time. But the music lifted to its next quick movement, as if it sighed, shrugged, picked up its beribboned petticoats, and said, Life goes on.

And life did go on.

“Such a shame,” said Mrs. Pritchard, when Mr. Greenaway brought her punch, “that poor Emily Redfern couldn't attend, after all the work she's done for the society. . . .”

“And the fortune she handed over,” added her husband grudgingly. "Hard cash, too. She must be the only person in town these days with cash money at hand, and she has to hand it over to some charity. He was already in retreat toward the lobby doors.

“She feels it very much,” sympathized little Mrs. Granville, pretending not to see the men's departure. “Hubert and I dined with her this evening, and with that nice Mr. Vilhardouin”-she got the pronunciation more or less right, and Greenaway stalled in his tracks like Balaam's ass-“such a kind gentleman, and so careful of Emily's comfort, only he is a Catholic, of course. I wonder what can be keeping him?”

Greenaway resisted Pritchard's impatient gesture, shook his head-after that January saw him look around every time a newcomer entered the planked-over parterre of the theater. When Clement Vilhardouin finally did make an appearance (“So sweet of you to have stayed to keep poor Emily company!” effused Mrs. Pritchard. “I know it must have bored you terribly to miss the ball!”), Greenaway stalked over to the attorney with the obvious intention of learning exactly what had passed.

January hid a grin and wondered if he could get a note to Hannibal, playing for the Blue Ribbon Ball at the other end of the notorious passageway, laying odds on a Vilhardouin-Greenaway duel before the end of the night. Most of the women in the room, however, were left bredouillees by their escorts, making a tapestry along the walls while the men appeared and disappeared into lobby, passageway, and Salle. Hubert Granville was especially prone to this sort of intermittence, though when present he was attentive to the point of uxoriousness to his stout little wife. “No, I'm steering clear of investments in banks for now,” January overheard him say to Colonel Pritchard, while they waited for their respective ladies to return from Madame Jumon's box. “At least till after next month's elections.” The music intervened, a lively mazurka, and January caught only the tail end of his account, “. . . thought I'd be able to put in a lot more, but it may not work out that way.”

“Stick with niggers,” advised Pritchard, and spit tobacco in the sandbox concealed behind the potted palms. “I sold that boy Dan of mine, the runty one. Stole every damn thing that wasn't nailed down-Well, I couldn't prove it, of course, but it threw a scare into the others, you bet! Fetched nine hundred dollars from a feller taking a coffle up to the Territories. . . .”

“Do you imply, sir, that the climate of this city is unhealthy?” roared a voice from the parterre. Granville, Pritchard, and Judge Canonge-one of the few justices in the city who had not already decamped for the summersprang down to separate Councilman Bouille from Dr. Ker. “There is no yellow fever in this city and there never has been! I will have my friends call on you, sir!”

January shook his head. Had it been only that morning that he and Paul had spoken to Olympe? That afternoon he had received a note from Ker, asking if he would be able to volunteer his time at the hospital to assist with the fever cases that had already begun to come in. Many of the wealthier inhabitants of the town had either already left for summer cottages along the lake, in Milneburgh or Mandeville or Spanish Fort, or for the North; those who remained spoke of nothing but their plans to depart in the near future. The faces of the two men, dead in the back room of the jail, had haunted his dreams last night, and he thought of Olympe tonight in her sweltering cell, the voices of the whores and the madwomen dinning in her ears.

He could tell when the Blue Ribbon Ball ended, around two-thirty: there was a sudden flood of men back into the ballroom, and Monsieur Davis, owner of both the Salle and the Theatre, emerged from between the Gothic stage flats to ask if extra dances could be added to the program when the agreed-upon twenty-one were finished. The violinist Cochon Gardinier, overflowing his tiny gilt chair, glanced at January, at the Valada brothers on flute and cornet, at Alcibiade Gargotier on the viol. January shifted his shoulders, which felt as if red-hot wedges had been hammered under them, and thought about the penniless months ahead. “Sounds fair to me.”

It was only when the dancing was done, and the musicians paid-only when he descended the narrow rear stair in the wake of Cochon and the others-that it came home to January how absolutely deserted now the streets of the French town would be. It had rained again during the dancing, and the streetlamps over the intersections threw glistening patches of yellow on mingled water and mud. The coaches of the last guests were departing, and the little bands of torch-bearing slaves. It was three streets up to Rue Burgundy and several streets over to his mother's house, and somewhere out therein the darkness, thought January, almost certainly, lurked Killdevil Nash.

Heart thumping hard, he reascended the stairs, crossed through the Theatre, where the last of the establishment's slaves were stripping the tablecloths from the refreshment tables, passed into the empty lobby and through the curtained passageway, where no colored men went save those hired to clean the place. The Salle d'Orleans itself was deserted and silent, the ladies who danced there long since departed to their highly expensive beds.

Logically, thought January, an assassin would be waiting where he could watch the service door of the Theatre, on Rue St. Anne, and from there follow him up

Rue St. Anne to Rue Burgundy. While this was going through his mind he was descending the service stairs of the Salle d'Orleans, following a narrow hallway among the offices to the Salle's downstairs lobby, from which doors opened into the gambling rooms that fronted onto Rue d'Orleans. At this time of the morning-it was nearly four-they were still surprisingly active, though the men there, steamboat pilots and sugar buyers and one or two of the more nearly situated planters, had for the most part taken off their coats and settled into hard play. Little stacks of gold double-eagles, of silver cartwheels, of English and German and Spanish coins, glittered on the baize cloths under the gaslight: deeds to plantation land, papers for credit and slaves. Dealers laid the spreads of cards, red and black and gold-poker, faro, vingt-et-un, long and short whist. The air stank of tobacco, the blue haze of its smoke and the faint sweet squishiness where it smeared the floor underfoot stank of liquor, of hair oil, of men's sweat.

On the way through the lobby he took a waiter's towel from the back of a chair and laid it over his arm, removed his hat, and shifted his grip on his music satchel,

carrying it reverently in one hand and his hat in his other. Then he entered the gambling rooms, looking inquiringly to the right and the left as if seeking someone: “Are you Michie Preobazhensky, sir?” he asked one man, and then another. “Michie Preobazhensky?” Still with the air of one dutifully seeking the owner of the bag and the hat he stepped out onto the Rue d'Orleans banquette, and in this persona walked along it for a little distance.

He looked around him. The street was deserted, though farther down Rue Bourbon he could see lamplight and gaslight from at least two other gambling estab lishments and hear music from one of them. He felt a pang of pity for whoever of his colleagues that was, playing still at this hour. I hope they're getting paid decent.

He put his hat back on, took his satchel by the handle again, and like the Three Wise Kings of the Bible, went home by another way. No one molested him en route. The sheets of his bed had been changed and by the light of his candle he saw that the pillow had been opened, probably searched by Bella for ouanga balls, and sewed back.

It still made him uneasy to lie in the bed, remembering the cross on the threshold last night-it seemed years ago-and the severed chicken foot, not to mention

Killdevil Nash's cold eyes. He did not sleep well, and when he did, his dreams were dreams of fear.

It had been a long and exhausting day.

Mist still drifted on the sunless river when January emerged next morning into the Place d'Armes and made his way along the stuccoed colonnade of the Cabildo to the Cathedral's doors. His head buzzed and his eyes ached from little sleep, but the scent of incense was calming. A few Ursuline nuns knelt in vigil close to the altar; otherwise, the occupants of the church consisted mostly of shopkeepers' wives, of servants in their soberest headscarves. The wealthier of the town-white, black, and colored, including January's mother-would attend the more fashionable Masses later. January wondered where the blond woman with the golden-haired child was now, and what it was she'd had from the voodoo-man.