thing smells a little high to me, and higher yet now that somebody's been interferin' with you. Fifteen years ago I'd have said, Don't worry, there's no evidence and you didn't know that woman from Eve's hairdresser. Fifteen years from now I might be sayin', Don't worry, they ain't gonna hang nobody for a colored gal's death, free or not free. Tell you the truth, Maestro, I don't know what to say now."
"Well," said January, "I know what to say." He held out his hand. "Thank you."
Shaw hesitated a moment before taking it, then did so. His hand was large, still callused from plow and ax. "It's my job," he said. "And it'll be my job to arrest you, too, if'n I don't find anybody else. The person who asked you to take a message to Miss Crozat-you want to tell me about them?"
January hesitated, then said, "Not just yet."
Madame Trepagier met him on the gallery, and even at a distance of several yards, as she emerged from the blue shadows of the house, he could see the marks of sleepless tension in her pale face.
"I wanted to thank you for your note," she said, holding out her black-mitted hand for the briefest of contacts permitted by politeness. "It was good of you."
"Not that it did you any good," said January bitterly.
"That had nothing to do with you. And at least I had the... the warning of what to expect." Her lips tightened again, pushing down anger that ladylike Creole girls were taught never to express. "Women so frequently turn out like their mothers I don't know why I was even surprised. But that may be unjust."
"If it is," said January, "there's things going on I never heard about."
And some of the tension relaxed from her face in a quick laugh. "And now I suppose I'll have to endure the... the humiliation of seeing my jewelry and things my mother wore, and my grandmother, on cheap little cha-cas and-" She caught herself just fractionally there, and changed the pairing with low-class Creole shopgirls to "American wives." As if through his skin, January knew she had originally started to say, on cheap little chacas and colored hussies...
She went on quickly, "And of course Aunt Picard's going to think I sold them myself and offer to buy them back for me."
No, thought January. She wouldn't have told her family about her husband's gifts to his mistress. Her pride was too great.
That pride was now in the quick little shake of her head, as if the matter were more one of annoyance dian anything else, and the way she put aside her own concerns in a warm smile. "With what can I help you, Monsieur Janvier? Won't you have a seat?"
She took one of the wickerwork chairs; January took the other. Below them in the kitchen garden, the old slave was back weeding peas, moving more slowly than ever among the pale, velvety green of the leaves.
"Two things," said January. "First, I'd like your permission to tell the police that the message I was asked to deliver to Mademoiselle Crozat came from you."
Wariness sprang into her haunted brown eyes. Wariness and fear. She said nothing, but her no was hard and sharp in the way her back tensed, and her hands flinched in her lap.
Slowly, he explained, "I was the last person to see Mademoiselle Crozat alive, Madame. Because I saw her in private, to give her the message from you. Now I've been told that there are some people who are trying to prove that I did the murder."
"Oh, my God..." Her brown eyes were huge, shaken and shocked and-why that expression of being backed into a corner?-of... calculation? "I'm so sorry."
"Now, I have no idea what you would have said to her at that meeting, and since Mademoiselle Crozat is dead and the jewelry's gone, you can tell the police anything you want, if they come and speak with you on this. But I need to tell them something."
For a long time she said nothing, her pale mouth perfectly still and her eyes the eyes of a card player swiftly arranging suits to see what can be used and how. Then she looked up at him and said, a little breathlessly, "Yes, yes of course... Thank you for... for asking me."
For warning me.
Why fear?
"Will your family be so hard on you, if they learn you tried to see her? I know decent women don't speak to plafees, but given the circumstances..."
She