his shabby brown corduroy and a soft hat, January fell into step with Madame Redfern's housemaid-Claire, he had heard her called on the night of the ball-by the simple expedient of putting two or three reales in an old purse of Bella's, and calling out, "Miss Claire, Miss Claire, you drop this?"
They walked down Felicity Street and to the grocery stalls by the batture at the foot of Market Street, together. Miss Claire was probably in her late thirties and had three children, a calm and matter-of-fact woman without inclination to flirt, but January didn't try to flirt with her: only talked, of this and that, mostly of her children-whom Emily Redfern had refused to purchase along with her-and the places she'd been.
"I understand what that Mr. Fraikes of hers says, that she can't afford to buy nor raise no little ones," said the slave, shifting her market basket on her hip as she moved from stand to stand of winter fruit. There were blood oranges from Mexico, and early strawberries; new lettuces now, and asparagus from Jefferson Parish; a glory of greens and flame-bright colors against the gray of the morning: "But rice is only a couple reales a peck, and you can buy three oranges for an English shilling-how much would it have cost her, to feed two little boys and a girl? She's a mighty hard woman, Mr. Levesque..." She shook her head January had taken some care never to use the same name twice among these people. "A mighty hard woman."
So it did not take much to learn whether Rose Vitrac had come to the Redfern home making awkward enquiries as to the possible fate of Cora Chouteau.
If she had, Claire Brunet knew nothing of the matter. And what, precisely, he wondered, as he made his way back along Tchapitoulas Street toward the Cabildo once more, did he think had become of Cora?
What did he think Emily Redfern's reaction would have been, had Rose Vitrac appeared one morning on her doorstep saying, I have proof that you poisoned your husband for five thousand dollars, and cast the blame on his unwilling mistress?
What proof could Rose have had?
Emily Redfern had certainly murdered her husband. No matter who had stowed the monkshood up Emily Redfern's bedroom chimney, if the boat that had brought her-along with Reverend Dunk and Mr. Bailey's white horses-to New Orleans had departed from the landing at Spanish Bayou "after breakfast," there was no way Cora Chouteau could have placed so fast-acting a substance as monkshood in her master's food.
Emily Redfern had certainly tricked the Reverend Dunk-if Dunk had been tricked-into taking the five thousand dollars Hubert Granville had brought out to the house so it would not be found by her husband's creditors. She had tricked her creditors as well, selling her slaves to the Reverend Dunk at half their value with the proceeds of the Musicale, so that she could pay off her creditors at a fraction of the debt, while he resold them and invested the profit.
But all that being so, what did he think Madame Redfern had done to Rose? Struck her over the head with slung-shot?
When? Where? For all her slim gawkiness Rose Vitrac was strong, and it was unthinkable that a colored woman would have been seated in the presence of a white woman who was not. Given Emily Redfern's lack of inches, the physical logistics of a blow over the head-or any sort of violence-became laughable.
And where did that leave him?
With a perfectly worked-out case clearing a woman who had vanished into thin air. Clearing a woman who had only slavery to return to, acquitted or not. Whose life was forfeit, not to the hangman but to the auctioneer's gavel.
And Cora could have met anyone as she left Madame Lalaurie's house that night, from the enigmatic Mamzelle Marie to Hog-Nose Billy to the vindictive and slightly cracked Monsieur Montreuil to Bronze John himself.
The fact was that she was gone, as Rose was gone. January had the sense of having read down to the bottom of a sheet of paper, reaching the same conclusion, the same result, each time.
Cora was gone. Rose was gone.
Weaving his way among the traffic of whores and roustabouts, of cotton bales and hogsheads of sugar, of pigs and pianos and oysters and silk, it occurred to him that Madame Redfern, had she dealt with Rose at all, would have been far likelier to settle the matter financially. Having ruined her, La Redfern would not