Midnight Confessions

by Candice Proctor

  Hamish squinted down at the ornate inlay decorating the bow’s wooden stock. “I suppose you had your reasons for waiting.”

  Zach kept his attention fixed on the boy with the watermelons. “Yeah.” If he’d followed Emmanuelle de Beauvais to her room last night, it wouldn’t have been to talk about miniature crossbows, but he wasn’t about to tell Hamish that.

  “What you think it means, this expensive little toy turning up again?”

  Zach shrugged. “It means that whoever did the killing is looking to pin the blame for it on Emmanuelle de Beauvais.”

  “Maybe. But then, she’s a clever lady, that little Frenchie widow. Maybe she left you alone in that room deliberately, hoping you’d stumble across this wee bow by accident, and knowing you’d be predisposed by the inclinations of your prick to believe it was planted there by someone else. And you can glare at me all you want,” Hamish added as Zach swung around to fix his friend with a hard stare. “But that prick of yours is seriously compromising this investigation, and you know it.”

  “I’m not sleeping with her,” said Zach, lifting the crossbow from Hamish’s slack grasp.

  “No. But you want to. You can’t deny you want to.”

  Zach settled the bow in its velvet-lined box and closed the lid. “I’m going to church,” he said, tucking the box in a canvas haversack.

  Hamish gave him a blank stare. “Church?”

  “Church,” Zach said, and left him staring, beagle-eyed and perplexed.

  It was a surprisingly large church, the German community’s Catholic church of St. Mary’s Assumption. Built of brick in a vaguely Gothic style, it had high, mostly clear-paned arched windows interspersed here and there with a few of stained glass. It wasn’t until he neared the shallow front steps that Zach could see signs of construction still under way, the pile of sweetly scented new lumber beside the open door, the sound of hammering echoing through the vaulted interior.

  He paused just inside the big front doors and breathed in the familiar scents of incense and beeswax. The nave was striking in its simplicity, the walls whitewashed and adorned with little more than a series of terra-cotta plaques depicting the stations of the cross. Up near the altar, a man was working at erecting a beautifully turned wooden railing—a tall, thin young man with a shock of light brown hair that tumbled over his forehead when he looked up at the sound of Zach’s footsteps. For one tense moment, the young German stared down the length of the nave, his hand tightening around his hammer. Then he straightened. “Guten Tag,” he said, and tossed the hammer into the box near his foot.

  Zach walked slowly up the central aisle, his gaze hard on the other man’s face. “You work here when you’re not at the hospital?”

  “This is not work,” said Spears, swiping one bare arm across his sweaty forehead. He wore neither coat nor vest, only simple trousers and a collarless shirt rolled up at the sleeves. “This I do for God.” He drew his hand in a wide arc, taking in the soaring ceiling and delicate apse. “We built this church, all of us, together. My mother and the other women carried the bricks in their aprons. Even the little children helped, the smallest carrying but one brick at a time.”

  Zach gazed down at the intricately pieced railing the man had been setting in place. “You’re a skilled carpenter. I should think you’d find this sort of thing more profitable than working as a nurse at the Hospital de Santerre.”

  Spears ran his hand along the smooth finish of the top rail in an almost sensual gesture. “I build with wood for joy, and for the love of God,” he said, his voice echoing in the hushed atmosphere of the empty church. “But this will not be my life’s work.” He half-limped, half-hopped over to lift his vest and coat from where he’d tossed them on the edge of the altar steps. “My mother is a widow with four sons, Major. She could afford to educate only the eldest of us, my brother Bertrand. But Bertrand has paid to educate Carl, and when the medical schools open up again after the war, Carl will pay my fees. Then I, in turn, will pay for Joseph.”

  “You want to be a doctor,” said Zach, wondering why the realization surprised him so.

  The young man gave a snort and turned his back to thrust his arms through the sleeve holes of his vest. “I will be a doctor. I’ve already learned much, working at the hospital. And I study on my own. Not just with books, but with those who know things the medical schools don’t teach.”

  “You mean people like Papa John?”

  “Yes, Papa John.” He gave the cuffs of his coat an unexpectedly fastidious twitch. “Why?”

  Zach opened the flap of the haversack he carried over his shoulder and drew out the brass-bound oak box. “Have you ever seen this before?”

  Spears swung about slowly, his gaze lifting from the box to Zach’s face. “Yes.”

  Zach found the other man’s honesty almost disconcerting. “When?”

  Walking with one hand on the screen for support, the German reached out to take the box from Zach’s hands and crouched down to set it on the altar steps. “Philippe showed it to me last spring,” he said, releasing the catches on the side. “I have a crossbow I built myself, years ago, before we left Bavaria. Of course, it is not so small as this one. But he knew I was interested.” He eased open the halves of the box to lay it flat, and stared at it for a moment in silence, his gaze caught by the slot for the missing bolt.

  “So you know how to use one?” said Zach.

  “Oh, yes.” The young German’s chest lifted visibly on a deeply indrawn breath as his head fell back, his gaze hard and intense when he looked up at Zach. “But I did not kill Henri Santerre.”

  “Who else do you know who’s familiar with crossbows?”

  Spears let out a short, sharp laugh. “What is this? My opportunity to incriminate someone else, and get myself off the hook? You don’t think much of me, do you, Major?”

  “I don’t know you,” said Zach simply, wrapping his hands around the railing and leaning into it. “What about Philippe? Could he use it?”

  “Of course. We went hunting together once, he and I, on the Bayou Crevé. He took this bow along and tried it out. It is surprisingly accurate, and cunningly made so that it is easy to string. A child could use it.”

  “Or a woman.”

  A flicker of some emotion showed in the other man’s eyes, only to be hidden by carefully lowered lashes. “I suppose so.”

  “How about Antoine La Touche? Did he share de Beauvais’s interest in crossbows?”

  “The gift was from him, wasn’t it?”

  Zach smiled. “Was it? I didn’t know that.”

  A muscle leaped along the German’s tightened jaw. He dropped his gaze to the box and closed it with swift, sure motions, the snap of the clasps sounding abnormally loud in the stillness of the church. “Anyone could have used it.”

  “With such accuracy? I doubt it.” Zach took the box as the other man held it out silently. “How about Dr. Yardley? Is he familiar with crossbows?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said the German, stumbling as he rose, trying to keep all of his weight on his one good foot. “I do not know him well.”

  “But you knew Philippe de Beauvais well?”

  Spears reached for his crutch where it rested at an angle against the railing. “Philippe was more than a good doctor; he was a born teacher. He knew it was my intention to attend medical school, and he went out of his way to help me.”

  It didn’t quite fit the image Zach had been building of the brilliant, dissolute, and self-obsessed man who had been Philippe de Beauvais. “Is that why you went with him that night? The night he was killed?”

  Spears hooked the crutch under his arm and rested his weight on it with a small sigh. “He needed someone he could trust. He trusted me.”

  “Who else went with you?”

  He looked up and tossed his head to shake the hair back out of his eyes. “A black man named Bubba. He was killed, along with Philippe.”

  “No one else?”

  “No.”

&nb
sp; “Did you know the mission was betrayed?”

  Balancing carefully on his crutch, Spears reached down to grasp the handle of his toolbox. He straightened slowly, his back taut. It was a moment before he spoke. “No, I didn’t know. But Philippe thought so. He said as much, after he was shot.”

  “I was told he died instantly.”

  “You should know how few men are lucky enough to die instantly, Major,” said Spears, swinging about on his crutch. “Even when they are shot in the head.”

  Zach fell into step beside him as he moved slowly toward the open doors. “What exactly did Philippe say, after he was shot?”

  Spears paused for a moment, his high forehead crinkling in thought. “I think he said, ‘the bitch.’ Yes, that was it, ‘the bitch.’ He said, ‘She gave the game away. She wanted to see me dead, and she always gets what she wants.’ ”

  “And then he died?”

  “Soon after.”

  “You saw him die?”

  The tip of the crutch tap-tapped on the bare floorboards as Spears limped up the aisle toward the sunlight. “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea who he was talking about?”

  The German shook his head, his jaw clenched noticeably tight. “No.”

  “Do you think he could have been talking about Claire La Touche?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about his wife?”

  “Emmanuelle de Beauvais?” Spears stopped just inside the open double doors, his eyes squinting as he gazed out into the fierce morning light. “No, she would never have done such a thing.”

  Zach paused beside him. “How can you be so certain?”

  Spears swung his head to look at Zach over his shoulder. “It wasn’t only Philippe who died that day. Bubba was killed, too. He might have been black, but he was still her friend. And even if he hadn’t been, she would never deliberately be the death of any man.”

  In the street outside, a boy ran past, guiding a hoop with a stick. “She went at Philippe with a scalpel, didn’t she?” said Zach.

  Spears surprised him by laughing, his head falling back as he stepped outside and stared consideringly up at the clear blue sky. “Ya. She did. But it was his manhood she was threatening, not his life.”

  “Because of Claire?”

  The German dropped his gaze to Zach’s face. “Is that what she told you?”

  Zach knew a moment of deep disquiet. “Was there another reason?”

  Spears shrugged and moved forward to hop awkwardly down the first step. “What other reason could there be?”

  Zach lifted the toolbox from the other man’s grasp and carried it until they’d reached the plank sidewalk.

  “Danke schön,” said Spears, a fierce light glittering in his eyes as he reached to take back the box, although whether his anger was with Zach, or himself, or the injury that had claimed his foot, Zach couldn’t have said. The German started to turn away, then paused, his features settling into thoughtful lines as he looked back at Zach. “We have a word in German, Leidenschaft,” he said, all trace of his earlier anger now gone. “I think of it sometimes when I watch Emmanuelle de Beauvais. It means passion, ardor.”

  “And suffering,” Zach said quietly.

  Spears’s eyes widened in surprise. “You speak German?”

  Zach shook his head. “I’ve read Goethe.”

  “Peculiar reading, surely, for a cavalryman?”

  “No more peculiar than carpentry as a hobby for a doctor.”

  The other man’s face broke into a spontaneous smile of pure, delighted amusement. “You’re right, of course. We all have our prejudices and preconceptions, don’t we, Major?”

  The boy sitting in the neat little shay waiting in front of the house on the rue Dumaine didn’t see Zach when he first rode up.

  Dominic had his head tipped back, his eyes squinting against the brightness of the noonday sun, the reins slack in his hands, when Zach said, “That horse is going to eat those basil plants right off Mrs. Angelo’s doorstep, if you’re not careful.”

  The boy’s head whipped around, his jaw going slack with surprise, his narrow chest hitching on a quickly indrawn breath as Zach nudged his big bay cavalry mount in beside the shay. He saw the boy throw a quick glance sideways, toward the banquette, as if he were thinking of making a run for it. But then the neat little black mare between the traces threw up her head, and he was too busy collecting the reins to think about getting away.

  “How do you know her name is Mrs. Angelo?” he asked when he was able, fixing Zach with a wide, intensely blue stare.

  “The same way I know your name is Dominic de Beauvais.”

  Dominic swallowed. “You here to talk to my maman?”

  “Yes,” said Zach, shifting the weight of the haversack he wore slung across his shoulder. “But not about you.” He cast a glance over the back of the shay, which was loaded with a picnic rug and fishing rods and crab nets.

  “We’re going out to the lake, crabbing,” said Dominic warily. Belligerently. “That’s not against your Yankee laws, is it?”

  Zach smiled. “Not that I know of. We used to go after lobsters when I was your age. We’d catch them in pots.”

  “Pots?” repeated the boy, interested in spite of himself. “How can you catch lobsters in pots?” His nose crinkled in disbelief. “You’re making that up, aren’t you?”

  The door opened, and Emmanuelle came out. She was fussing with something she carried in her arms, so that she didn’t see Zach until she had walked around to settle it in the back of the shay. “Alors, Dominic, I’ve looked but I can’t find it anywhere—”

  She broke off, the color draining from her cheeks as her head fell back and she stared up at Zach. She had the most exquisite face, built wide at the cheekbones, with a delicate chin and a full, generous mouth that whispered of passion and sin and lies. Lies. “We were just leaving, monsieur,” she said in that low, husky voice of hers.

  Zach rested one forearm on his pommel and leaned into it. “I’m afraid I need to talk to you about something. Something important.”

  “Now?” said Dominic with a wail, all fear of Zach and his uniform temporarily forgotten. “But we’re already late. If we don’t leave now—”

  “Dominic,” said his mother in a low, warning voice. She glanced back up at Zach. “Can’t it wait, monsieur? I’ve been promising him this for weeks.”

  “No, I’m afraid it can’t. But I don’t mind riding out to the lake. We can talk while your boy here goes fishing.”

  She held his gaze, her eyes deep and dark. He had come here to confront her with the damning evidence of that brass-bound box, to force her to tell him the truth, to shake it out of her if he had to. Yet when he looked into her eyes, all he could think about was the sweet, hot taste of her lips and the intoxicating smoothness of her bare skin and the way she whimpered when he cupped the swell of her breast in his hand.

  “Eh bien,” she said after a moment, the breath easing out of her in a long sigh that told him that she, too, had been thinking about last night, and all that had happened. All that hadn’t happened. “If you wish. I’ll get the picnic hamper.”

  Striding into the cool, shadowy entrance of the flagged passageway, Emmanuelle was met by Rose, who thrust the picnic hamper into Emmanuelle’s arms with enough force to make her go whuuhhh.

  “Alors, what are you doing?” said Rose in a harsh whisper. “Inviting that Yankee to go with you?”

  “I didn’t invite him.” Emmanuelle gripped the wicker basket against her midriff. “It was either this, or give up the trip to the lake entirely. What was I supposed to do?”

  “You know what I think?” said Rose, her head poking forward and her eyes narrowing as she stared at Emmanuelle, hard. “I think you’ve not only taken a fancy to that Yankee, I think you’re fixing to lose your heart to him, if you’re not careful.”

  Emmanuelle gave a low laugh that sounded forced, even to her own ears. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

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p; “Ridiculous?” Rose clamped her hands on her hips as Emmanuelle turned to go. “You’ve been without a man you really wanted longer than it’s natural for any woman, and that’s one good-looking man out there. But just don’t you go forgetting who he is, you hear?” Rose’s voice followed Emmanuelle back down the passage. “That Yankee major, he can toss your pretty little ass in jail quicker than a Confederate parrot can whistle ‘Dixie,’ and don’t you go forgetting that. Hmmm?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Papère and I used to go out to the lake crabbing and shrimping together all the time,” said Dominic in that boastful tone young males tend to use when they’re trying to impress a rival. “He knows lots of things you don’t know, about the bayous and the swamps and all the animals and plants that live there.”

  The major held his big cavalry mount to an easy trot beside the shay on the smooth shell road. “Papère?” he said, ducking his head as if hiding a smile.

  “Mon grand-père,” explained Dominic with a condescending, sideways glance that said clearly, You don’t know? “It was Papère who taught me to drive. Maman said I was too young, but Papère says we de Beauvaises are born sportsmen.” There was a pause, filled with the steady tattoo of the horses’ hooves and the jingle of the harness, before Dominic added, his voice suddenly going flat and tight, “Of course, he can’t do much anymore. He needs Baptiste to help him now wherever he goes.”

  Listening to him, Emmanuelle felt a swelling of emotion close her throat. Up until last May, Jean-Lambert de Beauvais had been a vital, energetic man with boundless energy and a long, quick stride and cheery bright eyes that belied his seventy-something years. Even after her marriage to Philippe had soured, she and Jean-Lambert had managed to maintain an easy friendship, spending long hours together fishing for bass on the bayous of Beau Lac, or attending performances at the French Opera House. Then word had reached New Orleans that the old man’s only surviving son had died in a hail of Yankee bullets on the Bayou Crevé, and Jean-Lambert had aged twenty years in one night.