Dead and Buried

by Barbara Hambly

  Had she, as Laertes cautions Ophelia not to do, ‘surrendered her maiden patent’ to the more charming – or more insistent – of her suitors? Did she learn he was an actor before or after this happened, if it had happened at all?

  She comes home – damaged in body, or only in heart?

  Her maid would know.

  Maids always knew something.

  All the well-bred young French and Spanish Creole ladies had them. Many families – both Creole and Americans – gave their eldest daughter her first slave at the age of six or seven. Usually, a girl the same age, or a few years older: taught to fix hair, mend hems when they came down, lace corsets, scrub spots of dirt from stockings and gloves. Without them, many of those narrow-waisted, tidy-haired, spotlessly-groomed little ladies would be hard put to maintain themselves presentably.

  He remembered the ladies of the Big House at Bellefleur when he was a child: his master’s Spanish Creole wife, and then his master’s sister, when she and her husband came to run the plantation after the wife’s early death. M’am Clarice’s maid had been an octoroon woman, as fair-skinned as her mistress but with African features and the curious gray-green eyes one often found among the sang mêlées – Serena, her name had been. January wondered what had become of her in the end.

  Serena’s whole life had been entwined with M’am Clarice’s. As protective and caring as a sister, Serena would stay up all night waiting for her Miss to return from a ball so that she could lock away her jewelry, would get up while the sky was still black, to light the kitchen fire and roast the coffee beans so that her Miss would have a cup when she rose at first blush of light in the sky. She wore her mistress’s cast-off clothing, combed her hair with her mistress’s hand me down combs.

  Ran her mistress’s errands, got the curse on the same day, knew her secrets as only a sister does.

  Isobel Deschamps goes to Paris.

  Isobel Deschamps returns to New Orleans and flees the city within a few days of the arrival of two Englishmen who may or may not have known her in Paris . . .

  Isobel Deschamps’s mother sells her maid. Which was the chief difference between an actual sister and a slave.

  It musta been a helluva somethin’.

  He expected to find Hannibal drunk again. The fiddler had, in the past, displayed a fiendish ability to wander away and get himself fogbound at exactly those times when he was needed most. But, while still among the trees, January heard the sound of the fiddle, like an exiled angel’s, weaving blithe fantasias around an Irish planxty – the kind of thing no one in New Orleans was interested in hearing. He climbed the rickety stair and found his friend sitting cross-legged on the bed in threadbare shirt and trousers, his thin body moving to the music and his eyes half shut, as if that were the one thing sufficient to keep corked the nearly-full bottle of sherry on the floor at his side.

  There was no smell of liquor in the room. Hannibal had even tidied up the attic and dumped the water buckets that sat beneath the assorted leaks. Quietly, January entered, found a pair of clean socks in one goods box and, in another, a faded waistcoat of a pattern that had been the last cry of fashion in Paris seventeen years before. He threw both on the bed as the song circled to its finish, and Hannibal sat for a time in silence, as a man rests in the arms of a lover. Savoring the echo of freedom before he must return to the real world.

  January wondered if he had slept at all since he’d dragged him back to consciousness here last Friday afternoon.

  After a time, he asked, ‘Do you fear he’ll look like his father?’

  Hannibal raised dark eyes, darker in circles of sleepless bruise. Head shake – slight, as if he had gone beyond the ability or desire for movement. Then he looked away. ‘He was the mirror of his mother when he was five. I expect he still is.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘With the whole of my heart.’ His gaze remained on the trees beyond the door.

  A flat monotony of dull green: no mountains, no hills, no seasons to speak of. Tropical heat or tropical rain. A world where earth and water mixed, entangled in the wet heavy vegetation of the swamp.

  Did Hannibal dream of Paris?

  Of Oxford where he had studied – studied what? – before he had joined Derryhick’s ‘merry band’ and thrown away his future to follow wine and song?

  Waking in the night, did he sometimes wait to hear the bells of Oxford’s spires, or those of Notre Dame as January still sometimes did?

  ‘She came to hate me,’ said Hannibal at last, and he gathered up the litter of silk scarves from the pillow beside him, in which he swaddled the violin like a mother wrapping up her child. ‘As she hated Patrick. And all of us. It was hard to see it in her eyes.’

  ‘Because he drank with you? Gambled away what money they had with you? Her husband,’ he added, when Hannibal glanced back at him.

  ‘Drank with us, gambled with us . . . God, the money we wasted, which should have gone to the upkeep and improvement of that land! O noctes senaeque deum! She was his cousin – well, mine as well. She’d been brought up at Foxford. She loved the land and knew better than either of us what needed to be done there. Never play cards after you’ve eaten opium, amicus meus. The sensation is amazing – you can actually smell the earth in the diamonds as they pass through your hands, and the hearts shed on to your fingers both water and blood – but the results are seldom happy. Philippa—’ He broke off and looked down at his hands, folded on his drawn-up knees, as if he had never seen them before. Long hands with slender fingers: good for nothing but the making of music that could tear the heart out of one’s body and set it free.

  ‘Are you afraid he’ll ask you how his father died?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s heard that from her – and Droudge – and everyone else in the family. I’m afraid he’ll ask me how his father lived, and that’s not a tale fit for any young man’s ears.’ But he drew his socks toward him and began to put them on.

  ‘Whatever she’s said about you to her son, that wasn’t your name then, was it?’

  The graying mustache pulled slightly to the side; a chuckle whispered in his throat. ‘No,’ Hannibal said. ‘No, it wasn’t. I suppose I’m perfectly safe.’

  ‘Were you clean-shaven in those days?’

  ‘As a virgin girl.’ He stood, shrugged into the waistcoat, and looked around for a comb for his long hair. ‘And about as experienced. And it is dishonorable of me to send you to do all the work of saving the young imbecile’s life – particularly when doing so gets you shot at by disreputable actors masquerading as gentlemen. Let us go, amicus meus – par nobile fratrum – and see what we can achieve.’

  ‘Another boon,’ said January, as they made their way down Perdidio Street toward the center of town once again. ‘Rose informs me that Celestine Deschamps sold her daughter’s maid to a dealer, the moment Isobel left town. She’s at Irvin and Frye’s. You think you could pass yourself off as a buyer?’

  ‘My dear Benjamin.’ Hannibal drew himself up with great dignity, then skipped nimbly aside to avoid a pair of extremely drunk Kaintucks who came crashing out through the front window of the Turkey Buzzard. ‘I can pass myself as anything from a street sweeper to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s secretary. Fortunately, my good waistcoat is out of pawn this week. I’m sure I have something respectable-looking in here . . .’

  He fished in his pocket for an elegant Morocco card-case, from which he drew a dozen or more visiting-cards, each handsomely inscribed with a name and address not his own. ‘Myron Pendergast of New York City – Imports . . . A good enough reason to be in New Orleans at this season – but what would I want a slave for? Salve, puella,’ he added, raising his hat to Railspike as that lady strode past them through the unpaved muck. ‘Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem spiravere . . . Thomas Dawes of Mobile. No occupation, but the typeface alone is as good as a bank reference.’ He flicked it between his fingers like a conjuror displaying the ace of spades. ‘I’ve even been to Mobile – briefly. An a
ppalling town. Would you like me to tackle Martin Quennell for you?’

  ‘Would you?’ said January, much relieved. ‘As Rose pointed out, I obviously can’t ask Lord Montague Stubbs about his quarrel with Derryhick.’

  ‘With the greatest pleasure in the world, amicus meus. One of these –’ he held up Thomas Dawes of Mobile’s card – ‘should serve to open a conversation, which can then be led to what, exactly, His So-Called-Lordship said to Patrick that sent him slamming out of Davis’s, and straight back to his hotel, in such a fury.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said January. ‘The Burial Society thanks you, too, since even if I could speak to a customer, I’m not supposed to draw attention to myself at the Countess’s. If it weren’t for the fact that Stubbs probably could not have reached the Hotel Iberville before Derryhick did, I’d suspect him of having something to do with the murder himself.’

  ‘Now, you’re only prejudiced because the man tried to kill you.’

  January grunted. ‘But whatever it is he knows – whatever his relationship is with Isobel Deschamps – I think we’re going to have to have proof in hand before Lord Foxford will admit a thing.’

  In this, he proved absolutely correct. ‘I just walked,’ said Foxford doggedly, seated before Shaw’s desk in the watch room again, dirtier and more haggard than ever. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea where or for how long. The streets were dark, and all those little houses look the same. Everything was shut up, and I just walked.’

  ‘You didn’t meet with Isobel Deschamps?’

  ‘I don’t know her.’ The young nobleman’s eyes flickered to the corner of the watch room, where Shaw had retreated with a newspaper. The Kentuckian was leaning against the wall, and though there was a vigorous argument in progress at the sergeant’s desk between a couple of lank-haired upriver farm-boys and a grocer, January would have bet his week’s coffee money that Shaw could hear every word Foxford said.

  ‘You didn’t meet her in Paris?’ Hannibal inquired, and Foxford’s eyes darted side to side and then back to Shaw again before returning to Hannibal.

  ‘No. I mean, I may have – I was in Paris last winter, and of course we must have been at many of the same balls . . . But I don’t recall her. Please, gentlemen,’ the young man went on, a note of desperation in his voice. ‘Please don’t be concerned about me. I have a lawyer, and I . . . The thought that I’d harm Patrick is grotesque. Particularly that I’d hide his body in that other poor man’s coffin . . . Why would I do a thing like that? Why would anyone?’

  ‘So that no one in your party would be accused of his murder,’ said January promptly. ‘So that Mr Derryhick would simply disappear, and in the fullness of time . . . What is the statute of limitations for property in Ireland, Hannibal? Seven years? Ten? In the fullness of time, Aunt Elodie’s money would come to you.’ ‘How dare you—?’ Foxford started to rise, and January replied in a steady voice:

  ‘It’s what they’ll say in court, Your Lordship. That and more.’

  The young man sat down again. ‘I don’t know any Isobel Deschamps,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know any Lord Montague Blessinghurst or Frank Stubbs or whatever his name really is. And they cannot hang me because I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Are you really willing,’ Hannibal asked quietly, ‘to have Lieutenant Shaw write to your mother to let her know you’ve been hanged?’

  Foxford’s jaw was set like iron, but January saw that the young man was close to tears. After a long time, and in a very different voice, the Viscount asked, ‘Do you know my mother, sir?’

  Hannibal shook his head. ‘Only what your father told me of her.’

  A longer silence still, in which the thwack of a whip could be heard in the courtyard behind the Cabildo, and a man’s anguished scream. At last Foxford asked, ‘How did he die? Mother told me – Patrick told me – he drowned while drunk. Fell from the railing of the Pont Neuf into the Seine.’

  ‘It was a bet.’ Hannibal’s breath went out of him in a harsh little sigh. ‘We were always making silly bets. This one was to stand on the railing of the Vert Galant – that little triangular square between the two halves of the bridge, on the nose of the island – and drink an entire bottle of cognac. I think it had something to do with that bronze statue of King Henry, which the city had replaced there only a year or two before. It was destroyed in the Revolution, you know – we were baptizing it or something. But you understand I wasn’t terribly sober at the time either. I wouldn’t have tried it. Patrick told Alec – your father – not to be a damned fool, I do remember that.’

  ‘Was he drunk already?’

  ‘Oh, God, yes. We all were. It was three in the morning – a beautiful spring night on the threshold of summer – and he stood there on the railing, pouring the brandy down his throat and weaving back and forth, and all of us afraid to breathe . . . except, of course, those who were passing bets back and forth about whether he’d fall or not. But even they were silent. Patrick was famous for doing something of the kind – balancing on the back of a chair and drinking ten glasses off the tops of the heads of the ten prettiest girls in the – er – tavern.’

  ‘Remind me never to let you tell this story at the Countess’s,’ murmured January, and Hannibal grinned, a little shyly.

  ‘I think I can still balance on the back of a chair,’ he mused. ‘There are some things one never forgets.’ He returned his glance to Foxford. ‘He claimed he could better it. He did, too. When he finished the cognac he threw the bottle to shatter on the cobblestones at the feet of King Henry’s bronze horse. Then he spread out his arms in the moonlight, raised his face to the moon . . . and smiled, leaned back, and fell like that into the river. They found his body about a week later, near Rouen. Did Patrick never tell you?’

  The Viscount said, ‘I never asked him.’

  There was silence for a time. ‘Did he know, do you think, sir?’ asked Foxford at length. ‘What he was doing, I mean?’

  Hannibal sat silent, one skeletal finger tracing the edge of the desk. Then he said, ‘Who knows what you think you’re doing, when you’re that drunk? I know your father wasn’t happy. I know he knew what he was doing to Philippa – to his wife,’ he corrected himself, ‘and to you, living as he did. And to his lands, for which he had . . . a great deal more feeling than most people guessed. I heard him say, more than once, that you and your mother would be better caretakers for his birthright than he was ever capable of being. He looked happy when he fell.’

  Silence again. Then: ‘Mother said the French police contacted Patrick, rather than her or Grandfather, when his body was found.’

  ‘Patrick took the diligence down to Rouen to identify him – which they had to do by his rings, and his boots – and we all put in money to have him buried in Montmartre. Do you know it? It’s a little village outside the city, among the vineyards.’ The Viscount nodded. ‘And then we all got punishing drunk at some brothel in memory of him, and Patrick the drunkest of all. No more than your mother would expect,’ he added softly. ‘But Patrick had nothing to do with making your father the way he was, whatever she’s said.’

  ‘I think—’ the boy began, then closed his mouth and sat for a time, gazing out into the watch room. A couple of the City Guards had dragged in a man from the levee, bearded and indescribably filthy, twisting and picking at his urine-stained clothes with shaking hands, muttering of ants and snakes.

  ‘What happened to his fiddle?’ Foxford asked instead.

  Hannibal said, ‘You remember that he played?’

  The Viscount nodded. ‘He gave me lessons, I remember, but I was too little. And I was never any good at it.’

  ‘I took it. It was better than my own. Did she try to keep you away from him? Your mother, I mean, from Patrick?’

  ‘Well, she couldn’t, you see.’ A smile flickered on Foxford’s lips, at the thought of his mother. ‘By the terms of Father’s will, he was my guardian, along with Uncle Diogenes, who, of course, was in India. Grandfather died when I was s
even, and there was nothing Mother could do about Patrick’s coming to visit. He’d never come further into the house than the drawing room, and sometimes the book room, if he had to talk to Droudge. But she’d retire to her bedroom on the days he’d be there and not emerge till he was gone. She was—’

  He broke off, trying, January guessed from his expression, to explain to strangers how he could love them both, and see his mother’s love through her anger at his friend. Then he shook his head again. ‘I daresay he’d have kept his distance from me if I’d believed her, and wanted to stay away from him, but I didn’t. She said he was like the Pied Piper of Hamlin Town. That he lured people away beneath a mountain, as the fairies used to, and they came back changed and not themselves anymore. Did he do so with you, Mr Sefton?’

  Hannibal sighed. ‘He did so with everyone he met.’ Then his eyes changed their focus, coffee black looking into the clear green-blue of the young man across the desk. ‘Don’t let your mother get another letter, like the one she got from Patrick.’

  Foxford looked away. ‘I don’t know Isobel Deschamps,’ he said stubbornly. ‘And I saw no one on Thursday night.’

  FOURTEEN

  There was no time to do more, that afternoon, toward saving the life of the young man who was doing his obstinate best not to have it saved. Shaw, who conducted them out, confirmed that no discrepancies had been found in Caius Droudge’s account of a night’s muffled sleep with cotton in his ears – ‘Not that that means he didn’t sneak out in his bedsocks an’ kill a dozen men an’ eat ’em, too . . .’ – and that the blowzy Señora Alcidoro maintained her story of an all-night cribbage session with Uncle Diogenes.

  ‘It’s perfectly possible he was up all night – er – playing cribbage with someone else, you know,’ Hannibal remarked as they emerged from the iron-strapped doors of the Cabildo. ‘Another patron of La Sirène’s, whose family would be horrified at his tastes and friendships. In which case we’ll probably never know who—’