Lady of Perdition

by Barbara Hambly

  They really did mean her to flee, reflected January. Whoever actually committed the crime …

  ‘How did you see me in the orchard, Madrecita? The parlor is in the front of the house, its window looks out into the yard.’

  ‘Your shawl was found beside my poor son’s body!’ Madame’s heavy mouth hardened like the mouth of a Japanese mask. Her eyes, January noticed, were completely dry, though her son had been found murdered not forty-eight hours before. ‘Your shawl, and your pistol. Sheriff –’ she turned like a lioness upon Quigley – ‘how can you hesitate? I told my son – I warned him of this girl, a hundred times!’

  ‘Indeed you did,’ returned the younger woman. ‘You warned him not to trust me – told him to put me aside! While eating the corn that was grown on my land, and the beef that was raised in my hills, and sleeping under the roof that my uncle—’

  ‘Ladies!’ Hannibal stepped forward, lifting his gloved hands, at the same moment that Quigley raised his own hands in the same placating gesture.

  ‘Ladies—’

  ‘I fear, sir –’ Hannibal turned to the sheriff, with another slight bow – ‘that I cannot permit you to arrest my client on evidence so questionable, without proper warrant. You are, however, welcome to accompany me in a search of the premises—’

  Francis Taggart and his mother both cried, ‘No!’ and stepped forward. Behind him, January heard the faint clatter and creak among the vaqueros, and glanced back to see Jalisco and the others unshipping their weapons. Not pointing them at the sheriff – and neither Missouri nor Twenty-One had touched the guns they carried – but making their presence felt.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t permit that, sir.’ Francis Taggart collected himself, and limped down the remaining steps to face the lawman. ‘My brother left written instructions that no intruders were to be permitted on Rancho Perdition land, in the event of his incapacity or death. Not until after the reading of his will.’

  ‘Vincent made no will,’ snapped Madame, startled. ‘He told me—’

  ‘According to the document I found in his study,’ replied her younger son hastily, ‘it sounds as if he did.’

  ‘You mind if I see this document?’ Quigley’s sharp pale eyes flickered to the young man’s face. Then he looked back at the elder Mrs Taggart, who was hastily re-making her expression of astonishment into one of determined agreement.

  ‘When you return with a properly executed warrant, sir,’ asserted Francis, a trifle smugly, ‘you certainly may.’

  The sheriff looked back at the vaqueros with their guns, then turned in frustration to Hannibal, who nodded wisely – just as if he’d studied law at the Inns of Court instead of wasting four years at Oxford in pursuit of Latin poetry and the local light-skirts. ‘I’m afraid he’s within his legal rights, sir.’

  January had already formed his own opinions about who had ordered the servant to leave Valentina’s door open that morning, and why Francis Taggart and his mother would rather have the house un-searched – considerations of lost silver mines entirely aside – and the young widow un-arrested. He held his peace, watching the glances that passed between them before Francis turned to Hannibal again.

  ‘And that –’ the youth concluded smugly – ‘includes you, sir.’

  ‘Mr Sefton –’ Valentina regarded her brother-in-law with an expression usually reserved for unwashed mongrel dogs – ‘is here at my request, to assist in protecting my interests. As this is my house, and my land—’

  Francis’s eyebrows snapped down over his nose. ‘It’s nothing of the kind! After murdering my brother—’

  ‘There is no evidence—’ began Hannibal.

  ‘—held in trust –’ Valentina placed a protective hand over her trim belly – ‘for the child that I carry.’

  This was the first that Hannibal or January had heard of a child, but Hannibal didn’t miss a beat. ‘Nothing can be decided,’ he declared, with the smooth authority of a barrister, ‘until Mr Taggart’s will is located and his wishes ascertained. Mr Quigley, I give you my word that Mrs Taggart, having returned to her home of her own free will, is unlikely to abscond. Indeed, to do so would jeopardize her own position with regard to her husband’s portion of the estate. But until some firmer evidence is found pointing to one or another person in particular—’

  ‘I saw her!’ protested Madame Taggart. ‘I saw that wretched hussy in the orchard, minutes before she murdered my son!’

  ‘If it was minutes before Señor Taggart’s death,’ pointed out Valentina calmly, ‘why did you not go out to the body at once when you heard the shot fired? Why was it three hours before—?’

  ‘You be silent!’ Her mother-in-law spun angrily and January had the impression that she only barely restrained herself from slapping her. January could almost see the snakes of the gorgon’s hair flaring out from beneath her black lace house-cap. To Quigley, she raged, ‘This girl quarreled with my son – the whole household heard it! You find her pistol beside his bleeding body, the shawl with which she concealed it from him only feet away, she comes tripping up to the house with the most preposterous tale of being chased by Indians, and you still refuse to believe in her guilt? What is wrong with you, sir?’

  ‘I doubt he was bleeding,’ pointed out Valentina, ‘three hours after his death – unless you saw his body immediately after the shot was fired and for reasons of your own went back into the house and told no one—’

  The elder Mrs Taggart lunged at Valentina that time, hand upraised. Quigley had evidently been brought up not to lay a hand on respectable women and Francis Taggart could only bleat, ‘Mama!’ Like the sheriff, Hannibal had been ‘raised right’, as they said in America. He had, however, spent ten years playing the violin in venues where women regularly engaged in fisticuffs and hair-pulling matches, and caught Mama Taggart’s wrist before her blow landed.

  The older woman spun in his grip and fetched him a stunning swat on the jaw that nearly knocked him off his feet, but Hannibal didn’t release his grip. Francis again cried, ‘Mama!’, Valentina drew back, Sheriff Quigley strode forward, and the vaqueros – like January – wondered what the hell they were supposed to do in a situation like this. Their guns – or the threat of them – obviously wouldn’t serve, and January had no intention of being hanged – or at the very least beaten to a pulp – for laying a hand on a white woman, no matter how belligerent.

  But Madame, weighed down by Hannibal’s weight on her wrist, drew back, boiling with rage. She wrenched her arm free of Hannibal’s grip, glared at Quigley and spat the words, ‘I will have your job for that,’ and, turning on her heel, stalked back into the house.

  Valentina turned to Sheriff Quigley, the picture of martyred dignity. ‘It’s true that I quarreled with my husband Sunday evening,’ she said. ‘But on Monday morning I was in the hills along Sauceitos Creek, where I was shot at, and my horse either stolen or ran away. I did not reach this house again until mid-afternoon.’

  ‘Why’d you run away yesterday mornin’?’ The sheriff’s eyes narrowed again.

  ‘Isn’t what you just saw sufficient explanation for that?’ The young woman flicked her hand toward Francis, and the door behind him through which her mother-in-law had vanished. ‘I knew I could expect no justice – not even a hearing – if she, and the son whom she hopes will inherit the rancho, have their way.’

  ‘Enough of this!’ Francis thumped his ebony cane on the ground. ‘As my brother’s executor—’

  ‘By what authority?’ demanded Hannibal.

  ‘—until such time as you bring a properly executed warrant, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask all of you – Sheriff Quigley, and you, Mr Sefton – to vacate these premises.’

  Jalisco and the vaqueros stirred again, looking at one another uneasily, not knowing whose orders to follow. But Valentina looked past her brother-in-law to the still-open door of the house, and called out, ‘Enoch?’ Under the near-certainty, January reflected, that every servant in the house was clustered around
the doorway just out of sight, listening …

  And indeed, a straight, handsome, middle-aged butler appeared instantly in the aperture, with the expression of a man who would not lower himself to eavesdrop even with the fate of humankind at stake.

  ‘Yes, M’am Valentina?’

  ‘Please show Mr Sefton’s man to the north guest-room.’

  ‘Yes, M’am Valentina.’

  January was a little disappointed that he wouldn’t hear the final stages of the sheriff’s dismissal – at this point Francis couldn’t very well permit Valentina’s arrest without allowing a search of the house as well – but knew that it was most important right now to establish that Hannibal, and incidentally himself, were not going to be chased away. Francis, left before the house’s great doors, looked uncertain as January passed him. For his part, January did his best not to look as if he were listening behind him, for the young man’s voice calling them back.

  He followed Enoch through the wide, tiled central hall of the ground floor. Beneath the main stairway, its risers and adobe balustrade handsomely tiled in orange and blue, a narrow door let into a pitch-dark, enclosed flight of backstairs. The ill-nailed wooden risers creaked under their weight as they ascended and a loose one caught the toe of January’s boot and nearly tripped him.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse us,’ apologized Enoch, in the soft accents of the Virginia tidewater. ‘We were not expectin’ company, an’ everythin’ in an uproar followin’ on poor Mr Taggart’s death—’

  Emerging into the upstairs hall, a spacious duplicate of the downstairs and, like most Mexican dwellings January had seen, nearly bare of furniture, they passed a thin woman in the plain blouse and skirt of a servant emerging from a door at the end of the hall. She said to Enoch, in Spanish, ‘I’ve made up the bed,’ and his severe face broke into a brief smile.

  ‘Knew Mr Francis wouldn’t chase ’em off, did you?’ To January – switching back to English – he said, ‘The guest-room opens off the back gallery here.’ He led the way through a double French door, into a bare chamber, windowed across the back of the house, between two small rooms which in New Orleans would have been called ‘cabinets’. ‘My wife can make up a pallet for you here, or in your gen’leman’s room, whichever your gen’leman would prefer.’

  ‘The gallery would suit me fine, if you’d be so kind.’

  Was that the Juana who left the door open yesterday morning?

  ‘Your gen’leman’s a lawyer?’ inquired Enoch, as they passed through the gallery – which overlooked the corrals to the north of the house, and offered a view of the orchard beyond – and into a small chamber to the left. ‘Poor Marse Vincent was a lawyer back in Richmond.’

  The little room was furnished (or semi-furnished, to an American’s eye) in the sparse Mexican style with a bed, a chest, a small table below the windows, and not much else. In the downstairs hallway January had noticed a number of new-looking lithographic prints of Biblical subjects – absent, apparently, in the upper regions of the house. At least the Mexican-style room lacked the gory, primitive crucifix that had seemed to be a feature of every bedroom he’d seen in Mexico itself. Absent also were the pieces of American-style furniture – chairs, whatnots, small tables – that he’d glimpsed downstairs. Madrecita Taggart’s contributions to the household?

  As he arranged Hannibal’s shaving things on the table he replied, ‘There’s all different kinds of lawyers in England where he comes from, sir – Chancery court and Queen’s Bench court and solicitors and barristers. I never can keep straight which kind Michie Sefton is.’

  ‘I heard that.’ Enoch checked the room’s other door, which presumably led into another room in the interior of the house, and made sure it was locked.

  ‘He was a friend of her father’s down in Mexico.’ January skated neatly away from telling a lie that he could be later taxed with. ‘M’am Taggart ran into him in Austin last week, and knew where he’d be stayin’.’ He had no reason to distrust the butler, but the scene on the front steps had been enough to clinch his suspicion that he had to pick his steps carefully. There was no telling, at this point, who was on whose side. ‘I know it’s not my place to ask,’ he continued diffidently, ‘but I couldn’t help overhearin’ some of the talk, an’ I wondered – when will Mr Taggart be laid to rest?’

  And is there any chance I can get a look at his body – or at least the contents of his pockets? Even as he framed the thought he guessed there wasn’t a hope.

  ‘He’s being put to rest today.’ Enoch’s face – inscrutable with the family’s secrets, like that of any good house servant who didn’t want to end up picking cotton – seemed to harden.

  ‘Of course, it isn’t usual for white women to attend funerals, though I understand they do in some places. But Mr Francis … well, he said it was more important for him to be here.’

  He was silent a moment, straightening a corner of the fine linen cloth that covered the dressing-table, as if by this small action he might tidy up some of the dark and pullulating mess that was the family which Valentina had described.

  ‘He’s a cold man, Mr Francis,’ the butler said at length. ‘But he cares for Miss Alicia, in spite of all she near drives him crazy. I’m thinking he didn’t want to leave Miss Alicia alone.’

  Or didn’t want to be away from Perdition when the sheriff arrived to search the house?

  ‘She’s torn up somethin’ terrible by all this. She never cared for Mr Taggart. Sometimes, when she’d had maybe a little too much headache medicine … when she wasn’t quite herself it was as if she were afraid of him. But to have this happen …’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a bad business. A bad business.’

  And it would be a bad business, reflected January, for any house servant who’d sided with the wrong faction, when the master died. He’d never encountered a slave-owner who didn’t owe thousands – usually tens of thousands – of dollars, and the master’s death was frequently followed immediately by a sell-off of slaves to cover them. The death of a master always meant trouble, even in a family that was not as divided as this one.

  The whole issue of wills and heirs could take on terrifying implications for those whose bodies were not their own.

  He forbore to ask further questions on the subject, however – aware that Enoch had his own jobs to do – and after a brief orientation regarding such important matters as, where were the slaves’ latrines (behind the stables), when the household staff got its meals (an hour before the white folks, in the long room that separated the kitchen wing from the dining-room) and was there anybody a newcomer needed to watch out for (‘M’am Amelia’s mighty strict with them who don’t look like they’re workin’.’), the butler left him to unpack the rest of Hannibal’s slender belongings.

  Instead of doing this, January returned to the upstairs rear gallery and looked out one of its wide windows, to get a better idea of the layout of the home-place of Perdition. The biggest of the corrals lay closest to the rear of the house, and he recognized his own big, rather clumsy-looking bay gelding being unsaddled by a grizzle-haired Mexican, in conversation with someone who stood too close to the house for January to identify.

  But the three horses still hitched – saddled – to the corral fence were those of the Tejano riders who’d escorted them to the house, including the black-and-white paint mare ridden by Jalisco. January turned, hurried down the backstairs, and out through the shaded downstairs piazza at the rear of the house to find, indeed, Jalisco and two other vaqueros, chatting with the stableman in Spanish.

  In that language, he said, ‘Señor? A word with you, if I may?’

  The vaquero raised a shaggy eyebrow and followed him a little ways along the house wall (cowhands clearly being discouraged from lingering in the piazza itself).

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, señor.’ January glanced back to the doors that led from the piazza into the house, through which the voices of Hannibal, Valentina, and Francis could still be faintly heard. ‘My impression is that
young Señor Taggart may consider it in his own interests that Madame Valentina be unable to prove where she was at the time of her husband’s death. For this reason, my master and I would like to have a look at this Arroyo Sauceito as soon as may be – immediately, if possible, before further time passes that would obliterate whatever signs may remain.’

  A slow smile twitched the man’s wide lips. ‘Not much remains as it is.’

  ‘I’d still like to see the place – my master would,’ he corrected himself. ‘And the orchard as well, if that’s possible. I understand it would be wiser to visit Sauceito Creek with an escort.’

  ‘We’ve seldom had Comanche this far east on the ranges,’ replied Jalisco. ‘But a man would be a fool to do otherwise. I’ve had a look—’

  Footfalls thumped in the central hall of the house. January turned his head and saw the door into the piazza open, and Francis Taggart limp through, followed by the tall, sandy-haired cowhand he’d seen in Austin playing bodyguard to the gorgons. Young Taggart’s spectacles flashed as he gazed at January and then Jalisco: ‘What are you still doing here, Jalisco?’ he demanded in English. ‘You know my brother’s orders. You should be out keeping watch on the San Antonio road. You never know who might try to come onto the property. And those were my brother’s orders.’ He glanced at the other two Tejano vaqueros, loitering near their horses, then returned his attention to January.

  ‘Your master intends to ride out to look at Sauceito Creek in half an hour, though I assured him, there’s nothing of interest out there. I’ll have Malojo saddle horses for you –’ he gestured toward the gray-haired stableman – ‘and Creed here –’ the slightest of nods indicated the sandy-haired cowhand at his back – ‘and two men will accompany you, though I assure you no Comanche has come anywhere near the spot in twenty years. Creed knows the way.’

  January bowed his head. ‘Thank you, sir.’