am unable to sleep-and I have never slept well, even as a child, never. Groans and cries come from the attic of that house; the sound of whips, and the clanking of chains. That woman-I've heard she keeps her slaves chained, and tortures them nightly! No one will admit to it," he went on. "The woman is too powerful, her precious family too prominent-No, no, she can do no wrong, everyone says! But me... I know."
"I'll keep that in mind," said January, nodding gravely at the fierce little man and his feverish fancies.
"Many thanks, Monsieur."
He backed away and returned to the corner of Rue de l'HSpital, looking up it in the direction in which Madame Lalaurie had said Cora had gone. It was only a matter of five streets to the school, and at that hour of the night it was unlikely she would encounter any of the City Guard. Not with everyone in that less-than-valorous organization terrified of the fever that rode the night air.
Had Cora encountered someone else? Seen someone who caused her to turn her steps and flee to the river, to seek Olympe's friend Natchez Jim and the first boat out?
And abandon two hundred dollars? The pearl necklace might very well have been left, considered too dangerous, but for two hundred dollars one could probably purchase faked papers attesting one's freedom. He suspected Hannibal had eked out a living from time to time by producing them.
Or had she only encountered Bronze John, waiting in the darkness as he always waited?
Thoughtfully, January began to retrace the girl's probable route from the big green house on the corner of Rue Royale, to Rue St. Claude, looking for what he might find.
Chapter Eight
At any other time, it would have been ridiculous to suppose that an event that took place late Friday night could have left signs still readable on Monday afternoon. The sheer volume of foot traffic along the banquettes-marketwomen, flatboatmen from the nearby levee, children rolling hoops, ladies out for a stroll, sellers of everything from pralines to shoe pattens-precluded so much as a dropped cigar stub from remaining in the same place or state for more than ten minutes, much less the marks of some unspecified conflict, meeting, or event.
At any other time.
But as he walked along Rue de l'H?pital to Rue St. Claude on the upriver side of the street, then back on the downriver side; as he repeated the process on Rue des Ursulines, up and back, then Rue St.
Philippe, January saw only one market-woman in a tignon, hastening head-down in the direction of the river, and, on Rue St. Philippe, a drunken, bewhiskered American, staggering along the banquette, pounding on the shutters of the houses he passed and shouting, "'Sa matter with this town? Can't a man find a hoor fr'is natural needs?"
Even such life as still beat in the town-the fashionable shops, the gambling houses that ran full-blast as if Death were not waiting like a coachman at the curb, the cafes and taverns along Bourbon and Chartres and Royale were farther over toward the center of the old French town or closer to the river.
Here the tall town houses, the pink and green and yellow cottages were closed tight against the creeping advent of evening. The invisible plague rode the deepening twilight with the humming of the mosquitoes and the cemetery stink.
January quartered the streets between the Lalaurie house and Mademoiselle Vitrac's school until it grew too dark to see. He studied doorways, walls, the brick of the banquette underfoot and the very ooze of crap and vegetable-parings in the gutters. It had rained at least three times since Friday, and he wasn't even certain exactly what he sought, and in any case he didn't find anything particularly interesting: a certain amount of spat tobacco, indicating the recent passage of American males; crumpled newspapers; three dogs and four rats in advanced states of decay; innumerable roaches; celery leaves; garbage. No pools of blood conveniently sheltered from the rain. No knives driven into doorposts. No headscarves or golden rings or pulled-loose necklaces so beloved of sensational novelists, no half-scribbled letters of enigmatic names.
He passed the house of the Perret family on Rue St. Philippe, and wondered whether they had, in fact, taken refuge on the floor of Uncle Louis's porch within breath ing distance of the lake or whether they might by some chance have remained home Friday night and seen something of Cora's disappearance.
The house was the last of a line of