A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [139]
“Mama, she with a lady, sir,” said the boy politely, in slurry Creole French. “You come in, though, it pourin’ out.” He stepped aside. Through an open door into the other bedroom January could see three more children, like little stair steps, sitting cross-legged on a big bed with a large, broad-shouldered, very kindly-looking mulatto man who was reading to them from a book.
The man got up at once and came in, holding out his hand. “You must be Ben. I’m Paul Corbier.”
Once upon a time January could have pictured Olympe marrying no one less impressive than the Devil himself. Looking at his brother-in-law’s face he understood at least some of his sister’s mellower mood. “I need to speak to Olympe, now, quickly. I think our sister’s in trouble … Dominique. I need somebody to find Lieutenant Shaw of the police—or any of the police—and send them out to the Gentilly Road, out to the Trepagier plantation at Les Saules, quickly. There’s an ambush been laid, murder going to be done.”
“They’ll want to know how you know this,” said Corbier.
January shook his head. “It’s not something I can prove. Lieutenant Shaw will know, it’s part of the Crozat murder case. Tell him I think Madeleine Trepagier is going to be ambushed there and we may need help. I’m going out there now.”
Harness jingled and tires squelched in the mud, and turning, January saw over his shoulder the chaise that had carried them out to the Allard plantation for the duel. Dark-slicked with water, the horse shook its head against the rain. By the oil lamp in the bracket above the door, and the lesser gleam of the carriage lamps, Mayerling’s scarred face was a pale blur in the dark of the leather hood.
“Dominique’s with Madame Trepagier. Get Olympe to go, or send one of the children, but hurry!”
January sprang down the high brick step, across the banquette, vaulting the gutter and scrambling into the chaise, crowding its two occupants. His last glimpse of the light showed Paul Corbier turning to give some urgent instruction to the oldest boy as he shut the louvered door.
Mayerling lashed the reins. The wheels jarred and lurched in ruts and mud and jolted as they passed over the gutters, sprays of water leaping around them with the black glitter of liquid coal.
“Hannibal tells me your sister Dominique is with her.”
“I had to take her somewhere. Minou knows enough not to speak of it later.”
“Trepagier will have hired his men in the Swamp,” said Hannibal, clinging to the two long guns and swaying with the violence of their speed. “For a dollar Nahum Shagrue’s boys would sack the orphanage if they thought they could get away with it. The mutable, rank-scented many … Keelboat pirates … killers.”
“I’ve met Monsieur Shagrue.” January remembered those pig-cunning eyes, and the stink of sewage dripping off his coat.
“The green Turk was with Charles-Louis Trepagier at the Théâtre on Mardi Gras night,” said Mayerling in time. “I remember his words concerning Madeleine.” The thin nostrils flared with silent anger. “I’m sorry now I didn’t settle the matter there and then, in the courtyard. Capon. I suppose by then he had decided that he would rather kill than wed her.”
“McGinty would have told him a proposal wasn’t any use,” said January. “He’d already tried it, as soon as Arnaud was dead—which means he knew there was a chance of the streetcar line going through even then. That must have been when he sent for Claud, and when he started romancing Sally, to keep an eye on Madame Trepagier’s movements. Of course as a broker who’d handled Arnaud’s affairs he’d have met her. It must have been Sally who told him Madame Trepagier was going to the quadroon ball to talk to Angelique.”
“Told him she was going,” said Hannibal, “but not what she would wear.”
“And Claud hadn’t seen Madeleine since her wedding to his brother,