A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [58]
“Or not long enough.” January returned to the table.
“You really thought the police would investigate the murder of a colored woman if the leading suspects were all white?”
January was silent, feeling the heat of embarrassment rise through him and disgust at himself for the trust he’d felt in the law, in the police, in the Kaintuck officer Shaw. He had, he thought, in fact been in Paris too long. Law-abiding as he was in his soul, it had taken him years to learn to trust authority there.
“What did the note say?” he asked in time. “Because you have to admit, Madame Dreuze’s story about Madame Trepagier sending a confederate to plant hoodoo hexes under her rival’s mattress isn’t something I’d care to take into court.”
“Oh, that …” His sister made a dismissive gesture. “Everybody in that crowd knew perfectly well that Madame Trepagier tried to swear out a writ late yesterday afternoon to stop the sale of the jewelry and the two slaves, and Madame Dreuze spent the whole morning at Heidekker and Stein’s, peddling every fragment, dress, and stick of furniture. Why else do you think Phrasie was carrying on so? She had to cover up. God knows anybody who causes Euphrasie Dreuze inconvenience has got to be the Devil’s in-law. Just ask her.”
“I had a wife like that once,” remarked Hannibal, dreamy reminiscence in his eye. “Maybe more than one. I forget.”
Minou rapped him on the arm with her spoon. “Bad man! But no, Ben. It wasn’t that.”
She rose and crossed to the sideboard where the covered dishes of greens and jambalaya, the rolls, and the wine stood ready, and from a drawer took a half a piece of yellow foolscap, folded small. Hannibal got to his feet and held her chair for her when she returned; she looked as surprised as she would have had her brother performed this gentlemanly office, then smiled at him again, and seated herself in a gentle froufrou of skirts. January had watched his sister at the Blue Ribbon Balls enough to know that, without being unfaithful to Henri Viellard in thought, word, or deed, she always had that effect on men. Certainly, to judge by the warm solicitousness of her eyes, Hannibal was having his customary effect on Minou.
The note was written in the labored hand of one who has acquired the discipline of orthography late and incompletely. At least, thought January dourly, it wasn’t tobacco stained.
February 16 1833
Mis January:
Regarding the notes which I askt you to make last Thursday night, many thanks for yor efort and time. It apears now, however, that they will not be necesary, and I would take it as a grate favor if you would put them aside in some safe place where they will not be seen. My deepest apolagys for puting you to the trouble of making them.
Yr o’bt s’vt, Abishag Shaw
She was only a plaçée, after all.
January’s hand shook with anger as he set the paper down.
“An American,” he said softly. “We should have known better than to look for more.”
Minou was silent, turning the tall crystal wine glass in her fingers. Henri Viellard was a good provider: The cottage on Rue Burgundy was decorated with expensive simplicity, the table china French, the crystal German. When first he had entered the house last November, January had immediately guessed that the podgy young man had simply given his mistress carte blanche. If tonight’s simple meal was anything to go by, her choice of a cook was in keeping with the rest of the establishment—and possibly, though Viellard wouldn’t have admitted it, the real attraction of the ménage.
It was not the house of a prostitute, not the house of a woman who sold herself to a man. It was the home of a couple who would have been married had the Black Code not forbidden it, the home of a woman whose man was prevented by law from living with her. The home of that curiously nuanced class of individual, a free plaçée of color.…
Whom Americans like Shaw would see only as nigger whores.
With a certain amount of effort he kept