her she stood up-she was washing the wounds of the woman who'd been in the iron spancel-and swiftly closed the distance between them.
"You should sit. I'll get to you."
"I don't need to be got to," said January. But he allowed her to lead him to the stairs that went up to the galleries where the cells were, and by the time they reached them he was out of breath and trembling, his head still pounding from the daylight. "I need to talk to you."
She folded her hands before her and stood looking down at him, bronze face calm.
"I know you gave Madame Redfern the poison she used to murder her husband." He spoke softly. There was so much noise around them that there was little danger of being overheard. "I have what's left of the poison, and the tin. I found them in her room at Spanish Bayou. And you were seen, by her house at Black Oak, where the tin was hidden."
"Only by a slave girl." She didn't seem in the least surprised or discomposed. "Her word is no good in a court of law."
"A slave girl who's just come back from death and Purgatory," he said. "Who's going to be a nine days' wonder with the newspapers. And who's now going to be arrested for a crime you know and I know she didn't commit. She couldn't have, she was gone from Spanish Bayou hours before the poison could have been administered; gone by the same boat that took Reverend Dunk away with the five thousand dollars on him that Madame Redfern wanted to keep, out of all the wreckage of her life."
Mamzelle Marie said nothing, nor did the dark serpent eyes shift.
Somehow, after having seen Madame Lalaurie standing in the doorway in her turquoise gown, the sight of this tall bronze-hued woman before him-poisoner and witch and worshiper of the Damballah serpent-could no longer frighten him. He'd seen worse.
For the rest of his life, he would always know in his heart that whatever happened, he'd seen worse.
"What I'd like you to do," January said, "if you would, is speak to her. Tell her that unless she writes out a paper of manumission for Cora Chouteau-unless she comes up with some alternate explanation about what happened to that five thousand dollars that disappeared, and it better be a good one-you're going to tell the police what she did. The police and her husband's creditors."
Mamzelle Marie started to speak, then closed her lips again. Her eyes were a world of black salt and graveyard dust.
Then she smiled.
"You know why Emily poisoned that man?" January nodded.
"Tell me."
"Because he'd bankrupted himself and her. Because he kept her from being what she wanted to be.
Because he was carrying on an affair, in her house and under her nose as if she were no more than another wench on the property. Because he told her it would go the worse for her, if she dared get rid of the girl-who never wanted to share his bed in the first place. Cora only fled because she found the poison and feared for her life."
"Ah," said Mamzelle softly. She reached down her long-fingered hand, and touched-very gently-the swollen, hurting mess of his shoulder. "I'll do as you ask, Michie Janvier. Certain things are bought with pain, God's favor among them. But you should know it wasn't me that sold the poison; and it wasn't her that bought it."
"You were there," said January. "Cora saw you."
"I was there," she said. "Otis Redfern brought me up there. He offered me the place at Black Oak, to be mine after his wife was dead. Her father tied the place up in trust. It wouldn't be Redfern's to sell, until her death. He had a key, you know."
"So did she."
"As well for her." She folded her arms. "He didn't know that. He told me he'd taken the only one she had. He bought the poison, from a man name Dr. Chickasaw, not a good man, but he have the knowledge; he's out by the end of the Esplanade. It's like her, to have made a copy of that key."
And watching her, as she made her leisurely way through the crowd to Madame Redfern's side, January thought that it was, in fact, very like Emily Redfern to have a spare key. In like circumstances his mother would have had one, too.
"Ben!" It was Rose. She caught his hand, then put her arms carefully around his shoulders-It wasn't fit, he thought