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Not even random violence that could have ended in murder, thought January wryly, could shake Dominique's sense of caste. Watching his sister through the arch into the rear parlor, and thence through the French door at the back and into the rainy yard, he knew that the coachman would be shown all consideration, given a cup of coffee and some of Becky's wonderful crepes, in the kitchen. The rain had let up almost completely, and through the open French doors to the street a few droplets still caught the lamplight as they fell. The streaming brightness flashed on the millrace of the gutter, and on the slow, lazy drips from the abat-vent overhead. A fiacre passed, the driver cursing audibly at the Trepagier carriage that stood, horse blanketed, before the cottage. A few streets away a man's voice bellowed, "Now, don't
you push me, hear! I am the child of calamity and the second cousin to the yellow fever! I eats Injuns for breakfast..."
Madeleine shuddered profoundly and lowered her forehead to her hand. Very softly, she said, "Don't ask me about it tonight, Monsieur Janvier, please. Thank you -thank you so much-for helping me, for being there." Her shoulders twitched a little, as if still feeling the grasp of heavy hands, and she brought up a long breath. "I know why you were there. You followed me from... from Rue Bienville, didn't you? I thought I saw you as the fiacre pulled away."
"Yes," said January softly. She raised her face, her eyes meeting his, steadily, willing him to believe.
"He is i
"You didn't," said January quietly, "and I know you didn't, Madame. That outfit of yours was leaking black cock feathers all over the building and you were never near that parlor. And you had nothing on you that could have been used for a garrote. Did you stay to see him?"
"No! He had nothing to do with it, I swear to you."
"Were you with him?"
She hesitated, searching in her mind for what the best answer would be, then cried "No!" a few instants late. "I saw him-that is, I saw him across the lobby... I saw him the whole time. But we weren't... we didn't..."
She was floundering, and January turned away. The woman sprang to her feet, caught his arm, her face blazing like gold in the soft flicker of the lamp. "Please! Please don't go to the police! Please don't mention his name! Come..." She hesitated, stammering, scouting, staring up into his face, trying to read his eyes. "Come to Les Saules tomorrow. I'll talk about anything you want me to then. But not tonight."
"So you can get a note to him?" asked January.
Her eyes flinched, then returned to his. "No, of course not. It's just chat-"
She got no further. Ha
Madeleine screamed, pure terror in her voice. She wrenched herself free with a violence that knocked away the chair by which she stood and ripped her assailant's face with the clawed fingers of both hands. Ha
"It's all right! It's all right! Darling, it's all right, he's a friend of mine-a very impudent friend."
Ha
"Oh, and that's how you treat me, is it?" retorted Minou, furious at the result rather than the deed, but furious nonetheless. Held tight in her arms, Madeleine was still racked with long waves of shaking, head bowed over, as if she were about to be sick. If she was faking, thought January, he had never seen it so well done.
And somehow, he did not think her horror at a man's touch was a fake.
"It's all right." He put a hand on Ha
"Oh, of course! I've already told Therese to tell Henri-zthat slug ever puts in an appearance-that I've been called away by an emergency, and to give him tisane and flan and everything he might need. Now you get out of here, you bad man." But she touched Ha
Glancing back, January saw his sister help Madame Trepagier into a chair, still trembling violently; heard
Madame Trepagier whisper "Thank you... Thank you.
"Augustus Mayerling, hm?" said Ha
In every house, past the iron-lace balconies and behind spidery lattices of wooden louvers, warm light shone, working a kind of magic in the night. Somewhere someone was playing a banjo-stricdy against the rules of Lent-elsewhere voices sounded from the two sides of a corner grog-shop, shutters opened all the length of the room onto the street, where free blacks and river-trash played cards, cursed, laughed.
"I hate to think it was him," January finished after a time, "because I like the boy. But of everyone in the Orleans ballroom that night, it sounds to me like Mayerling had the best reason for wanting Angelique dead. And Madame Trepagier knows it. And much as I like him, and much as I don't blame him for doing it, it's him or me... and I want to look around his rooms for that necklace."
"And if you don't find it, then what?" asked Ha
"Then why protect him? Why beg me not to so much as speak his name to the police? Why risk her own neck, if all that would happen to him was a night or two in jail until he was cleared? Other women have lovers. It isn't spoken of, but everyone in town knows who they are. It isn't as if she were deceiving a husband, and the plantation is hers to dispose of as she will, no matter what her family says. She doesn't have to say they were together in the ballroom. She can say they met elsewhere, if she's going to lie about it. But she doesn't. Why would she deny his involvement in anything so completely, if what he did doesn't bear scrutiny? It's not what he did," said Ha
January looked at him blankly. For a moment he thought, With that complexion he can't POSSIBLY be an octoroon trying to pass.
Ha
"What?" It stopped January dead on the banquette.
"Augustus Mayerling is a woman. I don't know what his-her-real name is." Ha