Dead water - Barbara Hambly [34]
Mrs. Tredgold, who presided over the Ladies' Parlor, only smiled benevolently at January's comicly mock-timid request to “thieve some of your coffee, M'am, for Michie Hannibal,” leading him to guess that his friend had exercised his customary charm even over the boat-owner's formidable spouse. Miss Skippen occupied a chair in the corner of the Parlor, nibbling a biscuit and being pointedly ignored by Mrs. Roberson and her elder daughter, Emily—a diminutive widow—and by Mrs. Fischer, whose own comprehensively glass dwelling should have endowed her with a little more charity about casting the first stone. Beside Mrs. Fischer, Mr. Quince continued earnestly on his lecture:
“. . . alternative to pushing them into a society in which, in their savage innocence, they will never be able to make a living . . .”
Not with gentlemen like our Massachusetts friend Dodd running the factories, we won't, thought January, pouring coffee from the larger pot into a smaller water-carafe and trusting that Hannibal had a spare cup in his room.
“This way, we will obviate the burden of the government and the tax-payer, and at the same time enable the freedmen to improve the lot of their savage brethren in Africa by their own industrious example. . . .”
January wondered if any of the members of the American Colonization Society had ever actually asked any man of African descent—slave or free—if he wanted to go back and live in Africa. At meetings of the Faubourg Tremé Militia and Burial Society—of which January was a member despite his mother's derisive insistence that most of the members were “dark as a pack of field-hands” (On the subject of glass houses and stone-throwing . . . he reflected)—not once had a meeting ended with all those libre artisans and businessmen leaping to their feet and shouting. Let's take the Society funds and all re-locate to Africa!
Quince didn't even look at him as he collected the coffee-tray and left the room.
Hannibal duly produced a second china cup from his luggage, and listened while January poured out coffee for them both and related the events of the morning. “Queen Régine obviously has a confederate on the boat—if that is her food down there and not someone else's. . . .”
“Someone else's food and someone else's poison?”
“A hit, a palpable hit. Hers, then. And just as obviously it isn't Thucydides, if he called out, Who's there? As for who was actually there . . . What time did all this take place?”
“Shortly before the boat left the landing, which makes me fairly certain that was the lovely Miss Skippen investigating the hold. Eight-thirty? Nine o'clock?”
“According to the lovely Miss Skippen, Mr. Molloy—apparently on a whim and at a few hours' notice—abandoned the pilot's berth on the Emperor Napoleon to Memphis, to take considerably less pay piloting the Silver Moon.”
“A few hours before departure, the Silver Moon didn't already have a pilot?” January paused in the act of buttering a roll, with a slight twinge of guilt that he hadn't taken a few more from the Parlor to save for Rose.
“Molloy undercut the original pilot's fee, evidently, and sought out Mr. Tredgold at the steamboat offices to convince him that his original head pilot was incompetent.” Hannibal gestured with his open hand, as if inviting January to take this explanation from his palm if he wanted it. “Miss Skippen is most annoyed, because this lesser pay means Mr. Molloy has reneged on several promised gifts—including a purple silk bonnet with pink plumes at La Violette on Rue Chartres that Miss Skippen had her poor little heart set on.”
January said, “Hmmn.”
“I'd say it sounds like your Mr. Granville's lady-friend at the cocoa-shop wasn't the only person who saw Mr. Weems at the steamboat office and put two and two together. It isn't unreasonable. Even riverboat pilots have to bank their money