She was estranged from both the Trepagiers and her father's family. No outraged sugar planters were going to go to the city council and demand of them that another culprit-preferably one of the victim's own hue or darker -be found.
Or would they? Was that something the city council would demand of themselves, no matter who the white suspect was? The courts were still sufficiently Creole to take the word of a free man of color against a white in a capital case, but it was something he didn't want to try in the absence of hard evidence.
And there was no evidence. No evidence at all. Except that he was the last person to have seen Angelique Crozat alive.
There was a ball that night at Hermann's, a wealthy wine merchant on Rue St. Philippe. He would, January thought, be able to talk with Hannibal there and ask him to make enquiries among the ladies of the Swamp about whether a new black girl was living somewhere in the maze of cribs, attics, back rooms, and sheds where the slaves who "slept out" had their barren homes. The girl Sally might very well have gone to her much-vaunted "gentleman friend," but his rounds as Monsieur Gomez's apprentice, and long experience with the underclass of Paris, had taught January that a woman in such a case- runaway slave and absconding servant alike-frequently ended up as a prostitute no matter what kind of life the man promised her when she left the oppressive protection of a master.
Another of those things, he thought, that most frequently merited a shrug and "Que voulez-vous?"
But when he returned to his mother's house after the Culver girls' piano lesson, he found Dominique in the rear parlor with her, both women stitching industriously on a cascade of apricot silk. "It's for my new dress for the Mardi Gras ball at the Salle d'Orleans." His sister smiled, nodding toward the enormous pile of petticoats that almost hid the room's other chair. "I'll be a shepherdess, and I've talked Henri into going as a sheep."
"That's the most appropriate thing I've heard all day." January poured himself a cup of the coffee that Bella had left on the sideboard.
"Not that he'll be able to spend much time at the Salle," she added blithely. "He'll be at the big masquerade in the Theatre with that dreadful mother of his and all his sisters. He said he'd slip out and join me for the waltzes."
"I wish I could slip out and join you for the waltzes." He turned, and above the yards of ruffles and lace, above his sister's bent head and dainty tignon of pale pink cambric, he tried to meet his mother's eyes.
But Livia didn't so much as look up. She'd been out when he'd returned from the market after his conversation with Shaw-after his visit to the cathedral, to burn a candle and dedicate twenty hard-earned dollars to a Mass of thanks. She had still been gone by the time he'd bathed and changed his clothes for the ride out to Les Saules. He wondered if she had engineered Minou's presence, had maneuvered things so that when he returned- as return he must, around this time of the day, to have a
scratch dinner in the kitchen before leaving for the night's work-she would have a third person present, keeping her first conversation with him at the level of unexceptionable commonplaces.
And when they spoke tomorrow, of course, the easiness of today's conversations would already act as a buffer against his anger.
And what good would it do him anyway? he wondered, suddenly weary with the weariness of last night's long fear and today's exhausting maneuvering in a situation whose rules were one thing for the whites and another for him. If he got angry at her, she would only raise those enormous dark eyes to him, as she was doing now, as if to ask him what he was upset about: Lt. Shaw had gotten him out of the Calabozo, hadn't he? So why should she have come down?
If they'd sent her a message the previous night, she'd deny receiving it. If he quoted Shaw's word for it that she already knew he was a prisoner when Shaw spoke to her, she'd only say, "An American would say anything, p'tit, you know that."
Whatever happened, she, Livia Levesque, that good free colored widow, was not to blame.
So he topped up his coffee, and moved toward the table: "Don't sit here!" squealed both women, making a protective grab at the silk.
January pulled a chair far enough from the table so that the fabric would be out of any possible danger from spilled coffee, and said "Mama, have you ever in my life known me to spill anything'" It was true that, for all his enormous size, January was a graceful man, something he'd never thought about until Ayasha commented that the sole reason she married him was because he was the only man she'd ever seen she could trust in the same room with white gauze.
"There's always a first time," responded Livia Levesque, with a dryness so like her that in spite of himself January was hard put not to laugh.
"Minou, did you know Arnaud Trepagier's first placee? Fleur something-or-other?"
"Medard," replied Livia, without missing a stitch. "Pious mealymouth."
Grief clouded Dominique's eyes, grief and a glint of anger. "Not well," she said. "Poor Fleur."
"Nonsense," said her mother briskly. "She was delighted when Trepagier released her."
"Her mother was delighted," said Minou. "He used to beat Fleur when he was drunk, but she was brokenhearted just the same, that he turned around and took up with another woman that same week. And her mama was fit to kill Angelique. I always thought it served that Trepagier man right, that he had to buy a second house."
"If I know Angelique, it was more expensive than the one Fleur had, too. Houses on the Rue des Ursulines cost about a thousand more than the ones over on Rue des Ramparts. Put one paw on that lace, Madame," she added severely to the obese, butter-colored cat, "and you will spend the rest of the day in the kitchen."
Dominique measured a length of pink silk thread from the reel, snipped it off with gold-handled scissors, neatly threaded her needle again and tied off with a knot no bigger than a grain of salt. "Fleur deeded the house to the Convent of the Ursulines when she entered as a lay sister, and that's where she was living when she died."
"And from what I understand, Euphrasie Dreuze tried to get her hands on that, too," put in Livia. "On the
grounds that it was still Trepagier's property, of all things. But what do you expect of a woman who'd use her own daughter to keep her lover interested in her, when the girl was only ten?"
"What?"
"Don't be naive." She raised her head to blink at him, emotionless as a cat. "Why do you think Etienne Crozat suddenly got so interested in finding Angelique's killer? He was having the both of them. Others, too, the whiter the better and not all of them girls. Whomever Euphrasie could find."
January's stomach turned as he remembered those two quiet-faced young men carrying their sister's coffin -those boys who would have nothing further to do with their mother.
"So she hardly needs your services in that direction anymore, p'tit." Livia wrapped two fingers in the gathering threads and pulled the long band of hemmed silk into ruffles with a gesture so heartbreakingly like Ayasha's that January looked aside. Did all women learn the exact motions, the same ways of doing things with needle and cloth, like the positions and movements of ballet? "I hope," she went on crisply, "that we will have no more trouble of that kind. By the way," she added, as January opened his mouth to inform her that yes, they were going to have a good deal more trouble of that kind if they didn't want to see him hanged. "Uncle Bichet's nephew came by to tell you they've had to find another fiddler for tonight. Hannibal's ill."
Minou's dark eyes filled with concern. "Should one of us go down to his rooms? See that he's well?"
"I'll go tomorrow." January got to his feet, glanced at the camelback clock on the sideboard as he put up his coffee cup. The dancing started at eight-thirty at Hermann's, and his bones ached for sleep.