Barbara Hambly - Dead water

Mr. Quince's single trunk contained numerous identical sets of shirts and underclothing, innumerable Swedenborgian tracts, fifty back issues of the Liberator, a dozen bottles of “Vegetarian Tonic,” and a dozen more of Kendal Black Drop, a quadruple-strength opium tincture.

Theodora Skippen's held enormous quantities of frilled night-dresses, silk stockings, fifteen gold watches, twenty-seven men's gold signet-rings, four gold and seven silver cigar cases (two with cigars), no two of anything engraved with the same initials.

Kelsey Lundy's yielded, among a few shirts and a spare pair of boots, two Bibles, several Abolitionist pamphlets, four copies of the Liberator, three bottles of laudanum, and a packet of sulfate of zinc, which January recognized as a powerful emetic.

No trunk, crate, or box examined held either banknotes, the packets of securities Granville had spoken of, or gold.

FIFTEEN

“La Pécheresse couldn't possibly have managed to spend four million dollars all in one afternoon before she left New Orleans, could she?”

Hannibal trailed January down the starboard promenade as Thucydides locked up the hold door and the hatch under Davis's watchful eye. The two coffles of slaves, having spent the forenoon poling the Silver Moon out of the chute and the mid-afternoon dragging luggage around, were now being ordered to assist in the task of helping the exhausted deck-hands lug wood to the furnaces to get steam up again, a process that would take until nearly dawn.

Climbing overboard in sightless night and fog and swimming for an unknown shore in the dark was beginning to make more and more sense.

“Even if she'd bought all those clothes and Weems had paid cash for three plantations and the slaves to run them,” January replied wearily, “it wouldn't have gone unnoticed. No, the money was on board and Molloy did something with it—or with some important portion of it. For that matter, Fischer and Weems had several days to remove the loot from their trunks themselves. We've been able to keep an eye on the stern doorway down into the hold, but they—or Molloy—could slip in at the bow end. . . .”

“And the deck-hands wouldn't have gossiped about it?”

January spread his hands helplessly. “It wouldn't take much for them to disguise themselves as German or Irish deck-passengers. Gold and securities could be brought up a little at a time and concealed under his stateroom floor between the joists. The same applies to the flooring of the hold.”

And, when Hannibal looked startled, he added, “We did that all the time at Bellefleur—the adult slaves did, I was too young. They'd steal things—food, mostly, or things that could be sold to the river-traders for food—and bury them under the cabin floors. That's why most planters build slave cabins up off the ground, no matter what they like to say about proper air circulation. It's to make it harder for the slaves to bury things under the floor.”

“The things I missed by not being born an American.” Hannibal eased himself down stiffly between the wood-piles. “Dear gods, I'm tired. I have the distressing suspicion I would not have made a particularly good slave.” And he unstoppered his flask for a quick drink.

Privately suppressing his certainty that as a slave his friend would have died of overwork and consumption long before the age of forty, January said bracingly, “Of course you would have. You'd have been promoted to butler and be running the plantation. The way you turned Molloy's attempt to push you into a duel into an opportunity to finally search the trunks—”

“Which got us exactly nothing.”

“Nonsense. It was a Socratic exercise in finding out what we do not know, clearing the way to look for Truth.”

Under his graying mustache, the fiddler's mouth twitched in a smile.

“Weems must have suspected some kind of jiggery-pokery with the luggage the moment it started being off-loaded to spar over Horsehead Bar,” went on January. “He ran to check it the moment he could get himself clear of the work-gang. If he found a substantial portion of the gold or securities gone, of course he'd begin searching staterooms the moment it grew dark—”

“At which activity Molloy surprised him and threw him overboard while miraculously making it appear that he was in the pilot-house with Mr. Souter,” finished Hannibal. “Unless Souter was lying, but I can't for the life of me see why he would be.”

He shut his eyes, and leaned his head back against the wall of the 'tween-decks. The sun was nearly down, long shadows reaching out over the water and bringing a merciful degree of coolness. With the clanging of its bell softened by distance, the Wellington appeared around the bend, heading down-river in mid-channel. Voices shouted across the water—the wood-detail was forgotten as deck-hands hastened to lower the skiff and row out to exchange New Orleans newspapers for those of Memphis, St. Louis, and Louisville. January watched the small Wellington idly, blithe in its disregard even for low water, barreling southward with the rest of the torn-off branches and floating debris.

“That may be,” he told Hannibal, “only because we don't know much about Souter. Or Lundy. Or Byrne. Or Davis, for that matter—if Weems was blackmailing one man on this boat to get bribe-money to have pursuers shaken off his tail, there may have been others. If we can . . .”

A flash of blue and pink skirts appeared on the stair over their heads, and a moment later Rose came around the wood-piles. “La Pécheresse has gone to the Ladies' Parlor to slander Hannibal until dinner,” she reported cheerfully. “Having spent the entire morning doing so to Sophie, who now believes him to be the Devil incarnate.”

“Just what I needed to complete my happiness.” The fiddler opened his eyes. “I shall give her my mother's address so they can correspond on the subject.”

“I've promised I'll help her—Sophie, I mean. Mrs. Roberson's elder daughter, Emily, is still in mourning for her husband, and offered to lend her some blacks until the boat reaches Memphis. . . .”

“Emily, who's all of four feet tall and as big around as my arm?” asked Hannibal interestedly, getting painfully to his feet. “You dwarf, you minimus . . . you bead, you acorn . . .”

“Even the very same. Sophie has been cutting and fitting most of the afternoon, as Mrs. Fischer wants to be properly in mourning for dinner. I've offered to help her—a measure of my dedication to the purposes of justice, as I cannot sew a stitch and detest the exercise.”

“Then let me strengthen your fingers by an invigorating kiss.” January took her hand and pressed his lips gently to every long, slender finger. “Am I included in the incarnation of evil? Or would you ladies like a little gallant company while you gossip?”

She gave him her quickflash smile. “I came out for that very reason. Only remember you're as puzzled by Hannibal's infamous conduct as anyone—you have no idea whether he's telling the truth or not.”

“I'll just run along, shall I?” suggested Hannibal. “Perhaps before supper I can catch the Tredgold children and tear out and devour their hearts.”

Rose said, “You do that and Cissy will be forever your friend.”

As Hannibal turned to go, and Rose disappeared up the stair once more, January laid a staying hand on the fiddler's frayed sleeve. “I hesitate to keep you from slaughtering the Tredgold children,” he said, “but if you're not too tired, you might idle your way up to the pilot-house instead and have a chat with Mr. Souter. I have no reason to think Mr. Lundy would have killed Weems—or that he could have, for that matter—but with both Fischer and Molloy trying to get us off the boat dead or alive, I think it's time we started checking on everyone aboard who wasn't somewhere at midnight last night.”

Sophie glanced up quickly as January's tall form blotted the last twilight from the open door. January creased his brow in a look of deepest concern and said, “Miss Rose, I'm glad I found you—good evenin', Miss Sophie. Miss Rose, what in the name of Heaven's goin' on around here? Michie Hannibal givin' me a tongue-lashin', that gold he's been talkin' about since we left New Orleans not bein' where he said it was. . . .” He shook his head in helpless bafflement. “An' now they're talkin' accusin' me of harmin' Mr. Weems. I swear”—he turned to Sophie appealingly—“I didn't know nuthin' about the man, 'cept what Michie Hannibal said. 'Cept I don't think anybody can be as sly an' sneaky as Michie Hannibal says he was.”

“Well, Mr. Weems was no saint with a halo on his head,” said Sophie primly, her needle flying in the neat, tight stitches that Ayasha would have approved of and that Rose couldn't have produced at gunpoint. “And I know that what he and Madame did was wrong. But her husband used her cruelly. . . .”

January realized that Sophie was referring to the Seventh Commandment, not the Eighth.

“. . . forcing her to flee from his house one night in a rainstorm, taking nothing but the clothes on her back and her jewelry. Surely she can be forgiven for running from such a man as that. How she has suffered! And poor Mr. Weems was very good to me, giving me a little extra money—for my inconvenience, he said, wasn't that sweet?—every time I had to sleep on the deck, and making sure that I had a good blanket, and fruit from dinner. I had only known him three months—since I came into Mrs. Fischer's house—but he was always so kind. Oh, how could you have done what you did, Ben? Cut him up, like a . . . like an animal? My poor mistress wept and wept. . . .”

“It cut up my heart to do it, M'am,” January assured her. “Just as bad as it cut up him. But he's dead, and felt nuthin'. An' my old master, that was a doctor, he taught me how to tell if a man'd been murdered. Without me doin' what I did, no one would have known, and Mr. Weems would have gone to his grave cryin' out to be avenged, an' no one knowing.”

Sophie sniffed, and wiped those immense brown eyes. “And to think that the murderer might be your own master!”

“I don't see how it could, M'am,” said January earnestly. “Michie Hannibal, he was playin' cards all that night in the Saloon.”

“Mrs. Fischer says he's sly, and dangerous, and clever,” replied Sophie, her voice sinking dramatically. “He could surely have slipped away to do the awful deed, while the others were engrossed in their game. She even thinks you might have done it, but if you had, why would you have cut up his body, to prove the murder? No.” She shook her head decidedly. “It was your master, in the pay of Mr. Fischer, seeking revenge upon Madame, and after she and poor Mr. Weems had tried so hard to achieve happiness. Oh, my poor Madame!”

A tear fell on the pieced-together crape of the black dress in her lap, and left its stain, like a sad echo, on the slave-woman's gray skirt beneath.

Refraining from taking issue with this unlikely scenario, Rose asked, “Were they together at all on that last night? I know you came down to the deck to sleep, after you helped poor Julie. . . .”

“Oh, poor Julie!” Sophie shook her head, and pressed a delicate hand to her brow. “I feel so guilty for having helped her instead of waiting for Mr. Weems! I might have been able to do something, to say something. . . .”

“But Mrs. Fischer sent you away,” pointed out Rose, “didn't she?”

“Yes.” Sophie sighed tragically and removed her hand, the stains from the crape on her fingers leaving a long, sooty smudge beneath the edge of her pink tignon. “Yes, she did. There was nothing, really, that I could have done. But I should have been able to. I brushed out her hair for her, and folded up her clothes and locked up her jewelry. She settled down in her wrapper to wait for . . . for Mr. Weems. . . .” A blush suffused the girl's ivory cheeks. “I'd made up a bundle, you see, for Julie, while I was waiting for Mrs. Fischer to come back from dinner. Some food, and a dress Mrs. Fischer had given me, which didn't fit me, and shoes. I took it out of the stateroom with me just as Julie came out of Miss Skippen's stateroom crying. I put my arms around her and tried to comfort her, and it was then that the boat ran on the bar. We clung to each other—I was afraid the boat would sink . . . !”

January blinked for a moment at this concept—by running onto the bar the boat had in effect touched the bottom of the river, and couldn't sink—but Sophie went on breathlessly.

“Then Julie said, ‘I'm going now! We must be near shore, and the water shallow, to run on a bar. I can get to shore, I know it!' Oh, poor Julie! I only hope she made it to shore!”

Eleven o'clock, then, thought January, unless something delayed her . . . But what would have delayed Julie for the hour that it took to walk the boat over the bar?

Which left, unfortunately, only one other black culprit with reason to wish Weems harm, and without an alibi.

Benjamin January.

“Do you know if Mr. Weems came to see your mistress at all?” asked Rose sympathetically.

Sophie shook her head tragically. “I know he didn't. She lay awake far into the night, waiting for him—when I came up in the morning to tell her of that . . . that horrible sight, that horrible thing Jim saw . . . all the lamp-oil was burned away. When I opened the door the first thing she said was, Run to Mr. Weems's stateroom, and learn why he did not come last night.”

“She did not go look herself, earlier in the night, then?”

Sophie recoiled in shock at the suggestion. “She was not dressed! She was so much the lady, she would not have ventured about the boat only in her wrapper and her nightgown! Oh, if only I had been there, I could have gone and searched in the night myself! Perhaps, if I had found him, I could have prevented his terrible death!”

“And when you told her . . . ?” prompted Rose gently.

“My poor Madame,” whispered Sophie. “The shock of it . . . all she could do was sit up in bed and say, What? Just like that . . . as if she could not believe. Then she said, Good Christ, and got out of bed without another word, and dressed. No tears,” she whispered, “though she has been weeping all the afternoon in the Parlor, with the other ladies about her. . . .”

I'll bet she has, thought January. After breaking into Weems's stateroom and searching . . . for what?

“It is a most tragic story. And I am the more grieved for hurting her, after all she has suffered already,” he said gently. “It might indeed have been my master who killed Mr. Weems.” He spoke reluctantly, like one convinced against his will. “But there are other evil people on this boat who might also have done this terrible thing. Not all of them,” he added, lowering his voice to a whisper, “men.”

Sophie's beautiful eyes widened and her lips parted with understanding and shock, and she glanced automatically to her left, the direction in which Miss Skippen's stateroom lay. Rose, taking her cue, produced a perfectly-judged little gasp and breathed, “Miss Skippen?”