Dead water - Barbara Hambly [125]
“Good Heavens, no!” said Davis, startled. “As far as I know, the two men couldn't abide one another.”
“Not to mention a man would have to be feeble in the head to give Gleet title to anything he ever wanted to see again,” added Lundy, sunk in the depths of the landlady's best blue plush armchair. “He tell you that?”
“He did indeed.”
“I understand Mr. Tredgold is going on to Memphis with his family with the next northbound boat,” said Lundy, and Lear leaned close and cupped his ear to hear him. The pilot looked like a dead man, draped over the chair like a pillow-case filled with broken stalks of cane, but his eyes burned sharp and green. “Not feeling so pert myself, I was fixed to stay on here a few days, so if you'd like, I'll take responsibility for any of the runaways that your patrols do find, until I can get in touch with Tredgold again and find out who Cain's heirs and assigns were.”
“That was neatly done,” murmured January as he helped the feeble old man up the stairs to the attic room he shared with Hannibal, January, and Thucydides. The Montague House generally had rooms enough for any steamboat's passengers to board ashore if they wished, but with another boat in port—the Wild Heart, down from St. Louis—and with all the Silver Moon's officers to put up as well, there was a certain amount of doubling up.
Lundy had announced himself quite willing to share quarters with Mr. Sefton and his “valet,” and the steward had offered his services to the pilot. Rose and Cissy shared a room in the basement, Sophie having elected to spend the night with Julie and the rest of the two slave-gangs in the woods. Most of the other white men were doubled up three and four to a bed in the other chambers.
“Hell,” said the pilot as they paused on the landing, “no county sheriff's got more than a man or two at his disposal at the best of times. Lear would have given that job to any white man who asked.” He clung to the bannister, panting, as January tapped at the door of the attic room, a chamber usually reserved for the servants of guests. “Thu an' that brother of his'll have their work cut out for 'em, gettin' those folks past Memphis and on up through Tennessee and Kentucky. 'Specially now, with Gleet's folks to be led, too.”
Thucydides opened the door. Past him, January could see Hannibal propped up in the room's solitary bed with Rose holding a cup of tisane for him. The fiddler looked like he was coming out of his stupor, but his hands were trembling badly—at a guess, out of need for opium as much as anything else.
Seeing the direction of January's glance, the steward said quietly, “He'll be well enough to travel in two or three days. I gather Julie must have told you that whenever my brother and I conduct cargoes north—and this was our fifth—I bring a little snakeroot, or Indian tobacco, in case someone starts getting suspicious and needs to be gotten out of the way. It removes their interference without permanent harm. Most people attribute the effects to sickness, and traveling in summertime. He was never in any danger, you know. We simply couldn't let the boat be held up—which the sheriff would not have done if the most likely suspect were too ill to be questioned anytime soon.”
“No, I understand,” said January. “And I understand your killing Weems. . . . You must have been watching Fischer like a hawk.”
“I was,” agreed Thu. “But I don't think Weems told her what hold he had over Bredon. He didn't entirely trust her.”
“No sane man would.” January recalled the hardness of those dark, intelligent eyes. “Would you have killed her? If you'd learned she knew?”
Thu hesitated, his face troubled. Then he let out his breath in a sigh. “I'd like to say something comfortable and respectable like ‘I don't know' or ‘I'd have found a way not to. . . .' But in fact, yes, if she'd showed signs of knowing—or telling—I'd have killed her. They lynch conductors of the Railway, Mr. January. In Virginia they were trying to put through a law allowing black conductors to be burned