He turned away and covered his face. "The first thing I thuh-thought was that I shouldn't have left her. If I'd stayed w-with her she w-wouldn't have been alone. She w-wouldn't have been k-k-killed. It was only later when I got home that Puh-Puh-Puh-... that Papa looked at me that way."
His arms wrapped around him, hugging himself with wretchedness, and January struggled to put his own anger at them aside-anger at the boy who would let an innocent man take his punishment, a man who would let an innocent take the punishment of a boy whom he truly believed to be guilty.
Behind his flank he flexed his gouged and bleeding hand.
Stay silent. Stay silent and learn.
But maybe, he thought, part of his own anger was only envy. He didn't like to think so, but he suspected that if it had been Minou who'd been jailed, their mother would have been at the Cabildo that night raising seven kinds of Cain until her child was freed. Even if she thought Minou had killed a man.
"I never thuh-thuh-thought it was p-possible to love someone like that," the boy went on, his voice a hoarse whisper now, speaking almost to himself. He might have taken the silence for sympathy, or he might have gone beyond awareness of January's existence, only needing to confess to someone who was not his father, someone of whom he wasn't afraid.
"I never thuh-thought I c-could love someone that... that wild. She was n-nothing like I'd ever thought about, or d-dreamed about, but I c-couldn't get her out of my mind. It was like one of those c-crazy, dirty d-dreams one gets. I n-never thought I'd violate another man's wuh-woman, or go through all those st-stupid little subterfuges, meeting her at night after he'd left, s-sending her secret letters, everything they do in n-novels. I didn't know what to do. And now at n-night all I c-c-can think about is her voice, and the times she'd be like a child who needed me. It was m-my fault," he added softly. He was shivering now, hands clutched together, pressed to his lips. "M-my fault she was alone when... when he came into the room."
"And you have no idea who he might have been?" asked January in the voice of his own confessor.
The boy raised his head, stared at him blankly, as if such a thought had never crossed his mind. As if Angelique's death had been like one of Byron's poems, some catastrophe engineered by malevolent gods to harm the bereaved, not attached to other matters in the victim's life.
As if, January realized, in Galen Peralta's mind, An-gelique had no other life than as the center of his consciousness.
"Do you know who might have hated her?" he asked. "Who might have wished her dead?"
Of course you don't, he thought, as the boy simply gazed with those tear-filled blue eyes. You never spoke to her about a single one of her other concerns, did you?
"I... n-no," he stammered. "Who w-would have w-wanted to harm her?"
The blind naivete-the complete ignorance-of the remark made him want to hoot with laughter, but that, he knew, would be his death.
"An ex-lover?" January suggested gently. "A rival? Someone she had wronged? If she had a crazy temper, she'd have taken it out on someone other than you."
The boy shook his head and looked away, face darkening in the gloom as he realized, perhaps for the first time, that he had not known very well the woman he had professed to so madly love.
"Was there someone you saw on the stairway?" asked January. "Someone you passed in the courtyard on the way out?"
"I d-don't... I d-don't remember anything. Look, my p-papa says we should let this all blow.. over...
"But then the man who did this will get away." January made his voice low, both grave and sympathetic, as if he were speaking to one of his students or to some poor soul at the night clinic. "Listen, Michie Peralta." He carefully used the idiom of the slaves, like a dog lowering itself down before another dog so as not to get killed. "I'm grateful to your father for sending me away rather than doing some worse thing, because I know it's in his power to do so." The arrogant bastard. "But one day I want to clear my own name, and to do that I have to find who really did it. If you can tell me everything you remember about that night, I can write to my family from France or Mexico or wherever I end up, and they can talk to the police, investigate this thing. Clear your name as well, not just with the police but with your father."
The boy licked his lips with a pale, hesitant tongue, but his watery eyes brightened a little. "I... I un-derst-stand. But I d-don't... I really d-don't remember."
Just as his love for Angelique had been a matter of concern to him alone, thought January, so in his mind he saw only himself at their parting and not anyone around him.
"How did you leave the building?" asked January in a coaxing voice, trying to ignore the agonizing pain in his hand. "Down the service stairs?"
Galen nodded. "I d-didn't... Everybody was in the upstairs lobby. But I heard... voices... in the office when I came out the b-bottom, so I w-went through the lobby and out into the c-court that way."
His father's voice, thought January. In Froissart's office, talking to Granger and Bouille.
"Did you see anyone in the lobby? Anyone you know? Or would know again?"
"I d-don't... I d-don't know." Galen shrugged helplessly and looked around, casting about for a reason to leave. "They were all w-wearing masks."
"What kind of masks? Anything really pretty? Really vulgar? Really ugly?" If the killer had ascended the service stair sometime during the progressive waltz, he-or just possibly she-would have almost certainly passed this distraught boy in the lobby or the courtyard.
"There was that vulgar p-purple p-pirate," said Galen promptly, his brow unfurrowing with relief at being able to recall something or someone. "M-Mayerling was d-down there, I... I hurried p-past because I didn't want him to see me. I didn't-I c-couldn't-do with speaking to anyone. There was a w-woman dressed like an Indian in b-b-buckskin..."
He frowned again, struggling with the mental effort as much as with his stutter. A very perfect young Creole gentleman, thought January dourly: competent with a sword or a horse and slowly being inculcated to the endless, careful work of running a sugar plantation, but utterly without imagination. Or perhaps with just enough imagination to sense that he was being pressed and molded against his will, the will he was not allowed to have, into something he was not. Enough fire in him to rebel against his father's demands by seeking out a creature of fire like Angelique Crozat.
"There was a k-kind of Turk in an orange t-turban," he went on after a moment. "He was in the c-courtyard. I remember thinking his t-turban looked like a p-pumpkin under the lanterns in the trees. And as I c-came down the steps I s-saw Angelique's little f-f-friend, C-Clemence. She was st-standing in the courtyard, looking for s-someone. But I c-couldn't stand to talk."
His face contracted again with sudden pain, and he turned away. "Duh-duh-don't... Don't let my father know I s-said all this," he whispered. "I have to g-go. I have to be out at the w-woodlot now. I just wuh-wuh-wanted you to know I d-didn't... I d-didn't kill her. Do you believe me?"
"I believe you," said January. You cowardly link wretch. And, hearing the anger in his own voice, the threat of sarcasm fighting to rise to the surface, he added humbly, "Thank your father for me. And thank you."
"It's all I can d-do," said the boy softly. "I hope... I hope your friends c-can find who really d-did it. I hope what I've t-told you is some help. Because I c-can't even c-confess this, you know? I cuh-cuh-can't... I cuh-can't c-confess that I left her alone."