Demarco’s relief was evident. Yes, yes, he said, thank you for reminding me. A mere formality, of course, but, as you say. . . . His gesture bespoke the bothersome nature of such mundane detail. He withdrew the prepared paper from his coat and spread it on the table. John Roger signed it and Demarco put it back in his coat and then consulted his fob watch and expressed surprise at the hour. He apologized for his rudeness in departing in such haste, but he was late for an appointment and he anyway knew Don Juan was a busy man. Please don’t get up, he said—though John Roger had made no move to rise—I can make my way out. And then was gone. In the entirety of the visit, he had met John Roger’s eyes only in the briefest glances and had not once looked at his empty sleeve.
At dinner that evening, as she cut his beefsteak, Elizabeth Anne asked, “What did that oily little man want with you?”
“To clear up an overdue account.”
She gave him an arch look. “I believe you have acquired a rather formidable reputation, Mr Wolfe. He was terrified of you.”
He returned her look in kind. “How do you know it was I he was terrified of, Mrs Wolfe? I’m sure I’m not the only one in this house who has acquired something of a formidable reputation.”
She blushed through her smile and stoppered his chuckle with a piece of beef on the end of her fork.
He wrote to Richard Davison to tell him what happened and assure him the office was in good hands, and concluded with the news of Demarco’s reimbursement. The sum was sizable and he asked Richard if he wanted him to send it to New Orleans via the consulate’s courier service. In his answering letter, Richard wrote, “Dont think about getting back to work till youre all healed up good. Are you getting proper doctoring? They say theres American doctors to be found in Mexico City. Im truly heartsore about your arm Johnny but my hats off to you for making the son of a bitch pay the full freight. And sounds to me like you mightve scared Demarco enough to make him partly honest. Keep the money he gave you son, youve earned it.”
He had agreed with Elizabeth Anne that to tell her family the truth about his arm would only stoke their perpetual fear for her safety in Mexico. She hated to lie but hated even more to increase her family’s worry. So she had written that John Roger had lost an arm in a carriage accident but was adjusting well and in good spirits. Mrs Bartlett wrote back—it was always she who wrote the letters, never Sebastian, never Jimmy—that they were all of them dismayed to learn of John Roger’s severe mishap and wished him a sound recovery. But she could not refrain from adding that she had never known anyone to lose an arm in a carriage accident in New England.
He returned to work in early January. The clerk Patterson had assigned to the office was a stocky twenty-year-old Charlestonian named Amos Bentley, moon-faced and sandy-haired, who had been grateful for the chance to do something other than sit around the consulate in wait of new files to shuffle. He welcomed John Roger back and complimented him on his scrupulous recordkeeping, which had made a simple task of serving as his surrogate. They reviewed the deliveries and shipments that had taken place in John Roger’s absence, then the correspondence received and sent. John Roger commended Bentley’s precise bookkeeping and the cogency of his prose. His dulcet Carolina accent imbued even his perfect Spanish, as John Roger heard when the young man read to him some key sections of the correspondence. Amos had greatly enjoyed dealing with the transport agents and the shipping officers, most of them earthier types than he was used to. He found the import-export trade enticing, in a way even adventurous, and was sorry to be going back to the dull duty of a consular assistant.
John Roger had been back to work only a few days and was attending to paperwork in the office when Patterson showed up unexpected and accompanied by a woman dressed in black and carrying a small portfolio. A large, rough-looking man in an ill-fitting suit started to come in with them but the woman gestured to him and he nodded and went back out into the hall and closed the door behind him.
In formal Spanish Patterson apologized to John Roger for the unannounced intrusion but said the concern was most important. John Roger had stood up when the woman entered, and he somehow knew who she was even before Patterson presented her as “la señora Consuelo Albéniz de Montenegro.”
“Encantado, señora,” John Roger said. And at once felt witless for conveying gladness to meet a woman he’d made a widow. He invited them to be seated and Patterson held a chair for her in front of the desk, then sat himself at a small remove and told John Roger that Mrs Albéniz, as she preferred to be called, had come to him at the consulate seeking to know where she might find Mr Wolfe. She explained to me her purpose in wishing to meet with you, Patterson said, and has asked that I be present during the proceedings, if you have no objection. I am to serve as, ah—he looked at Mrs Albéniz—an official witness?
“Solamente con el permiso del Señor Wolfe,” Mrs Albéniz said.
“Como no,” John Roger said. Whatever madam wishes.
Thank you, the woman said. Her gaze direct but difficult to read. She was visibly much younger than the man to whom she’d been married and clearly not the mother of Enrique. And pretty, irrespective of the small pink scar on her chin and a pale one of older vintage under her left eye.
She gestured at John Roger’s coat sleeve, folded double and pinned up, and said, I wish you to know that am very sorry for your terrible injury.
And I am very sorry for . . . about your husband, John Roger said. Please believe me, madam, it was not my preference to fight. He gave me no choice.
I do believe you, Mr Wolfe. My husband had no interest in anyone’s preferences but his own. And please believe me when I say you have caused me no grief. The black dress is but a necessary convention. My marriage to Hernán Montenegro was arranged by my father when I was fourteen, in settlement of some bargain between them. Our family’s social standing was superior to that of the Montenegros, but my father and my husband were men of the same character and I had no love for either of them. Nor did my husband love me, I assure you. He had been wed twice before and fathered God knows how many children, but neither wife survived, and by some bad joke of God the only male child who did was Enrique, who was as stupid as he was cruel. Hernán married me solely in hope of siring a worthier heir. I hope I do not offend you with my frankness.
You have no cause to make apology, madam, John Roger said. Please speak as frankly as you wish.
You are kind, she said. I have a daughter, Esmeralda, soon to be seven years old. She is the sole happiness of my marriage. I gave birth twice more, a son each time, but neither one lived even two months. May God forgive me, and you will think I am heartless, but I did not mourn their deaths. I feared they would have become their father. Or mine. I must again risk offending you, Mr Wolfe, in view of your severe suffering, but I am glad you had no choice except to fight, because the outcome of that fight has liberated me from Hernán Montenegro. And from his equal brute of a son. One reason I am here is to thank you.
I appreciate your sentiments, madam, John Roger said, but please understand that it gave me no pleasure to . . . I mean, I had no intention to, ah. . . .
I understand, she said. Although, if I have been correctly told, it is Mrs Wolfe who rid the world of Enrique.
Well, yes, that’s true. But, ah. . . .
I am told she also had no choice.