such pains to imply that Cora had returned to the plantation Wednesday evening. No wonder the woman had been so eager to ruin Rose Vitrac, and drive her out of town. No wonder she was willing to sacrifice her pearls and a hundred and ninety dollars cash money, to avoid Rose remaining in custody where she might be questioned by others. Granville had brought the money out to Spanish Bayou Wednesday morning; the money had departed with Dunk "after breakfast"-and, therefore, far too early for Cora to have had the slightest thing to do with the administration of the poison-and Otis Redfern had come down sick Wednesday night.
It only remained to be seen what, if anything, Dunk would do now.
Since the Reverend almost certainly had an evening performance as well as a matinee, January made his way through the pine copses to Catherine Clisson's locked-up cottage on London Street. There, settling himself on the gallery, he produced a spyglass from his pocket. Through this he watched the hotel, especially the white shell path that ran between the main block and the stables, until it grew too dark to see.
More women arrived; those on the gallery returned inside for another session. Lights blossomed behind the curtains with the evening's approach. Now and then, when the wind set right, he could hear the faint echo of wailing, the only enjoyment, he reflected, that the majority of the American women allowed themselves.
The moon was in its first quarter, already westering; not a night, he thought, that would permit carriages to be abroad late. At the dinner hour the building disgorged women again, some of them to carriages drawn up before the steps, others onto the galleries, where they talked and ate sandwiches and eventually moved off in twos and threes into the thickening dark.
But if the Reverend Micajah Dunk were discomposed or startled by the return of the Redfern pearls, or the news that someone might have spoken to Cora Chouteau, he did not hasten to break the news to Emily Redfern.
January took the last steam rail-car into town. The only other occupant of the colored car was a single elderly woman who cradled a small dog in her arms, and crooned it lullabies all the way back:
Go to sleep, my son, crab is in the shell. Go to sleep, my son, crab is in the shell, Papa has gone to the river, Mama has gone to catch crab.
Go to sleep, my son, crab is in the shell. Go to sleep, my son, crab is in the shell.
It was one of the few lullabies January could recall his mother singing to him, her body silhouetted against the lighter darkness of the slave-cabin's door. He tried to recall whether his father had been there then, but had no memory one way or the other. Only the rocking of the steamtrain, and the creaking of the spring's first frogs, and the disembodied murmur of those nonsense words, like a voice from some other world speaking to him in the falling dusk.
Chapter Twenty
To the Editors of the New Orleans Bee, and to all concerned citizens of this town: To say that justice has been miscarried would be too feeble, too passive, too weak-kneed a description of the vile horror perpetrated yesterday on the bludgeoned sensibilities of a bereaved family and on the populace and good name of our fair city. Saturday night judge J. F. Canvnge permitted a murderer to walk free, a charlatan as black of heart as of hide. A week ago Wednesday, at the Orleans Ballroom, this self-styled doctor, Benjamin Janvier, in reality a voodoo practitioner and pander to the lusts of his fellow Ethiopes, prevented me by invective and threats of violence from bringing aid and succor to M. Jean Brinvilliers, who had been slightly wounded in an affair of honor in the lobby. When I attempted to remonstrate with Janvier he thrust me bodily back from his victim, and only after he had been forcibly removed from the scene by M. Froissart, the ballroom's manager, was I able to bring the light of medical science to bear. Alas, too late! As the result of the delay in treatment, M. Brinvilliers succumbed, not so much to his wounds, as to the rough and superstitious treatment meted out to him by this Janvier. It has come to my knowledge today, from the distraught Brinvilliers family, that this murderer was allowed to walk free.
Shame on you, Judge Canonge! This Janvier is a man well