A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [50]
But Livia only cocked her sunshade a little further over her shoulder and asked, “And why are you so fired up all of a sudden that I have to believe you?”
“She’ll tell that policeman that I had something to do with Angelique’s death,” whispered Judith. “She’ll tell him Madame Madeleine and I did it.”
“Policeman?”
“That tall American one, as tall as you, Michie Janvier. He’s at the house now. He’s askin’ questions about you.”
“About me?”
EIGHT
Madame Madeleine Trepagier
Les Saules
Orléans Parish
Friday afternoon
15 Fev. 1833
Madame Trepagier—
My attempt to deliver your note to Madame Dreuze met with no success. She has conceived the opinion that at your instigation, the slave woman Judith obtained a death talisman from a voodoo and placed it in Angelique Crozat’s house, and that this was what drew Mlle. Crozat’s murderer to her. She has expressed this opinion not only to five of her friends—Catherine Clisson, Odile Gignac, Agnes Pellicot, Clemence Drouet, and Livia Levesque, all free women of color of this city—but I believe to the police as well. Though I doubt that the police will take any action based on what is quite clearly a hysterical accusation, that she made this accusation told me it would do no good for me to plead your cause.
It appears that Madame Dreuze is in the process of gathering together all jewelry in her late daughter’s house preparatory to selling it as quickly as possible. Moreover, I have reason to suspect that she intends to sell both slave women—Judith and the cook Kessie—as soon as she can, to forestall any claim you may make upon them. I strongly suggest that you get in touch with Lt. Abishag Shaw of the New Orleans police and take whatever steps you can to prevent Madame Dreuze’s liquidation of her daughter’s valuables until it can be ascertained which of these items are, in fact, yours by right.
Please believe that I remain your humble servant,
Benj. January, f.m.c.
It was, January reflected, rubbing a hand over his eyes, the best he could do. Dappled shade passed over the sleeve of his brown second-best coat like a coquette’s trailing scarf, and on the bench beside him, two young laundresses with heaped willow baskets on their laps compared notes about their respective lovers amid gales of giggles. By the sound of it, the Irish and German girls in the front of the omnibus—maids-of-all-work or shop assistants, grisettes they’d have been called in Paris—were doing the same. A carriage passed them, the fast trot of its two copper-colored hackneys easily outpacing the steady clop of the omnibus’s hairy-footed nag.
It was perhaps intelligence that would have been more kindly conveyed by a friend in person rather than by note, but even had he gone back to Desdunes’s Livery and rented another horse to ride out again to Les Saules the moment Judith had told him about Lt. Shaw’s visit to the Crozat household, January doubted he could have returned to town before two. And two o’clock, murder and wrongdoing aside, was the hour at which, three times a week, the daughters of Franklin Culver had their music lesson, at fifty cents per daughter per hour, or a grand total of four dollars and fifty cents each Friday. If he thought Shaw would place the slightest weight on Euphrasie’s accusations it would have been a different matter, but his warning was one that could as easily be conveyed by note, and he had not the smallest doubt that Madeleine Trepagier would act upon it with all speed.
He sighed, and rubbed his eyes again. On either side of Nyades Street cleared lots showed where cane fields had once rattled, dark green, hot, and mysterious. A double line of massive oaks shaded the road, draped in trailing beards of gray-green moss, and far off to his left he could glimpse the green rise of the levee,