A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [31]
“Ah.” The policeman nodded. His face, ugly as an Ohio River gargoyle, was as inexpressive as a plank. “ ’Xplains why a private citizen all dressed up like Maid Marian brung the news, ’stead of an employee of the house.” His English would have earned January the beating of his life from his schoolmasters or his mother, but he guessed the man’s French was worse. “Now I think on it, ’xplains why anyone brought the news at all. So Miss Janvier’s your sister?”
“Half-sister. Sir.”
“Beautiful gal.” The words might have been spoken of a Ming vase or a Brittany sunset, an admiring compliment without a touch of the lascivious. He turned back to the assembled planters, bankers, and merchants crowded in the ballroom door. “Gentlemen,” he said, “as a representative of equal justice in this city, I can’t say I approve of divagatin’ from the law, but I understand yore reasons, and I’m bound to say I accepts ’em.” He shoved back the too-long forelock with fingers like cotton-loom spindles. “With your permission, then, I’ll note down what any of you saw anonymously, and I thank you for doin’ your duty as citizens in figurin’ out the circumstances of this poor girl’s death and findin’ the man what killed her. I will ask that you be patient, since this’ll take some little time.”
There was an angry murmur from the ballroom. January saw several of the men—mostly Americans—glance toward the curtained passageway and guessed they’d have a number of desertions the moment Shaw was out of sight. “Mr. Froissart,” said Shaw softly, “could you be so kind as to lend us your office for the interviews? It’ll likely take most of the night, there bein’ so many. Would it trouble you too much to make coffee for the folks here? Boechter,” he added, motioning one of his constables near, “see to it nobody wanders in off’n the street, would you?”
Or wanders out, thought January, though he guessed Constable Boechter wasn’t going to be much of a deterrent if Peralta or Destrehan grew impatient and decided to quit the premises. Shaw motioned him over and said, “Maestro? I’d purely take it as a favor if while you’re waitin’ you’d play some music, give ’em somethin’ to listen to. Sounds silly, but music doth have charms an’ all that.”
January nodded. He wondered whether it was chance, or whether this upriver barbarian truly knew the Creole mind well enough to understand that by turning the nuisance into a social occasion with food, coffee, and music, he would keep his witnesses in the room. “If it’s as well for you, Dominique and I can wait to be interviewed last. Sir. You may want to get through as many of these as you can before they get bored and start walking out.”
The lieutenant smiled for the first time, and it changed his whole slab-sided face. “You may have a point, Maestro. I think I’ll need to talk to your sister first off, to get the shape of what it is I’m askin’.” He spoke softly enough to exclude not only the men grouped in the ballroom doorway, but Froissart and his own constables. “I take it your sister’s here with her man?”
“He’ll have gone by this time,” said January. “Half the men here tonight just slipped back through to the Théâtre; their wives and mothers are going to swear they were with them all night on that side. I doubt there’s anything you can do about that.”
Shaw spat again—he had yet to make his target—but other than that kept his opinion to himself. “Well, we can only do what we can. You may be waitin’ a piece.… What is your name?”
“January. Benjamin January.” He handed him his card.
Shaw slipped it into the sagging pocket of his green corduroy coat. “Like they say, it’s the custom of the country.”
From his post on the dais, January could watch the entire long ballroom and hear the surge and