of coffee soaking into wool carpet hung thick in the air. Outside a woman sang "Callas! Hot callas hotl"
Then Euphrasie burst into fresh tears and flung herself onto the bosom of the only male present. "They murdered my little girl!" she howled. "My God, they witched her, put evil on her, so someone was drawn to kill her!"
Livia rolled her eyes. January's mother was small and delicate, like her younger daughter but not so tall, almost frail looking, with fine bronze skin and Dominique's catlike beauty. At fifty-seven she moved with a decisive quickness that January didn't recall from her languid heyday, as if her widowhood, first from Janvier and then from Christophe Levesque, had freed her of the obligation to be alluring to men.
"She hated her!" Euphrasie moaned into January's shirt. "She ran away, again and again, going back to that uppity peteuse. She hated my angel, she wanted her dead so she could go back..."
Livia meanwhile set the pitcher down, picked up Judith's head scarf and the unbroken saucer and cup, and said to the sobbing servant, "Get a rag and vinegar and get this coffee sopped up before the stain sets." She thrust the scarf into the girl's hands. "Put this back on before you come back. And wash your face. You look a sight. And you" - she pointed at Clemence, sagging gray faced against the side of the door, both lace-mitted fists stuffed into her mouth - "don't you go faint on me again. I haven't time for that." She looked around for the gris-gris but January had retrieved it from the floor and slipped it into his coat pocket.
"It was that woman," Euphrasie wailed, clutching January's lapels. "That stuck-up white vache! That nigger bitch, she'd run off, trying to go home, and that Trepagier, she'd tell that girl how if my Angelique were to die, she'd take her back. I know it. That Trepagier set her up to murder my child, my only little girl! Oh, what am I going to do? They drew down death on her and left me to starve!"
"Phrasie, you know as well as I do Etienne Crozat left you with five hundred a year," said Livia tartly. "Benjamin, pull her loose or she'll hang on to you weeping till doomsday. You'd think it was her funeral tomorrow and not her daughter's."
Odile Gignac meanwhile had helped Clemence Drouet to one of the overstuffed brocade chairs, where the girl burst into shuddering tears, handkerchief stuffed in her mouth, as if all her life she had been forbidden to make a sound of discontent or grief. "There, there, cherie," murmured the dressmaker comfortingly. "You mustn't cry like that. You'll make yourself ill."
January had to reflect that his sister was right about the Drouet girl's dresses: Like her costume last night, this one-also designed by Angelique, if Dominique spoke true-though costly and beautiful, made her look like nothing so much as a green-gold pear.
"That Trepagier put her up to it! She put her up!" It was astonishing how Madame Dreuze could keep her face buried in his sleeve without either muffling her voice or disarraying her tignon. "She hated her like poison! They poisoned my child, the two of them together!"
"Angelique was strangled," Livia reminded her dryly. She went to the sideboard and handed January a clean napkin from a drawer as he fished vainly in his pockets for a handkerchief. "And you can't very well say Madeleine Trepagier turned up at the Orleans ballroom and did it. Get that child out of here, Odile. She's been nothing but underfoot since..."
"Why not? She could have come in through the Theatre..."
"With all the Trepagier family in the Theatre to recognize her? And that hag of an aunt of hers?"
"That black slut Judith did, then! Why not? She hated my child..."
At Livia's impatient signal, Catherine Clisson came forward and eased the weeping woman from her leaning post. Clisson relieved Ben of his napkin and proceeded to dry Euphrasie's eyes as she guided her toward the settee. Livia Levesque took her tall son's arm and steered him briskly toward the door, and January went willingly, unnerved by the accuracy of Madame Dreuze's chance shot. "I swear," declared Livia, as they descended the two high brick steps to the banquette, "it's like a summer rainstorm in there, between those two watering pots." She pulled her delicate knit-lace gloves on and flexed her hands. "Give me rny parasol, Ben."
"Why does she say the girl Judith hated Angelique?" January