not to his deserving sons, but to his widow. She in turn, when she was gathered to the reward of all good Creole matrons, passed along the money and a substantial hunk of property to brother Albert's children by means of an unbreakably airtight will. Don't ask me why she bypassed Alphonse. Maybe she didn't like him very much."
"I can understand her sentiments."
Hannibal coughed, a brief line of pain appearing between his dark brows, and he fished in his pocket for the opium tincture that suppressed both coughing and pain. He took a tiny, judicious swig. "I suspect he's even more unpleasant on close contact. God knows how his wife... well. In any case, the brother's children, instead of sharing some of the proceeds with Uncle Alphonse, as he probably hoped they would, turned the real estate by an Act of Procuration over to their mother-who, as you recall, is Madame L's cousin, Creole society being stiff with McCartys. The Act of Procuration was handled by the Louisiana State Bank Jean Blanque's old outfit-and since Madame is widely known to keep all her business affairs in her own hands rather than let Nicolas Lalaurie lay a finger on them, Montreuil assumed that she was behind the plot."
"Was she?" January got to his feet to light a pair of candles, for with the thunder of rain overhead the afternoon had gone pitchy dark.
"Who knows? Most of the McCartys go to her for business advice, or for money to float investments.
She bankrolled this school, I know that. I don't know whether she advised Cousin Manette or not. But Montreuil's never forgiven her." Hannibal picked up his violin again, sketching threads and bones and shadows of airs while he spoke, as another man might have drawn boxes and diamonds on the margin of a paper while speaking, or made knots in string. "Then when the Ursuline Sisters put their land along Rue de l'Hopital up for sale, Montreuil wanted to buy the lot next to his house, except he didn't have the cash-videlicet Act of Procuration, above. Madame bought the lot-and the unfinished house-out from under him.
"Since that time he's been telling everyone who'll listen that she's a monster. His wife claims she saw her chase a little Negro girl off the roof with a cowhide whip-though how she could have seen that I can't imagine, since the Montreuil house is a full story shorter than the Lalaurie-and reported her to the police for it. The girl had actually died of a fall, and Madame was fined, so it isn't really surprising that Madame is pretty careful these days to keep her servants behind walls and away from anyone who might talk to any of Montreuil's people. You grew up in this town. You know the kind of things that get printed in the papers, and talked around the markets, and believed."
January was silent for a time, listening to the rain and remembering the fury in Mademoiselle Vitrac's voice, the bitterness in her gray eyes. "I take it Mademoiselle Vitrac knows Madame Lalaurie? If Madame helped finance the school?"
"Rose knew the wife of one of Madame's McCarty cousins she'd gone to school with her in New York. The banks were less than eager to lend Rose money once they found out there was no Monsieur Vitrac. I gather someone made the mistake of remarking to Madame Lalaurie how one couldn't really expect a mere woman to manage a business-some people have no sense of self-preservation." The violin shaped a phrase of notes, as clear and mocking as the ironic lift of an eyebrow: were it not for consumption, and pain, and the twin nepenthes of alcohol and opium into which that pain had driven him, Hannibal would have been the greatest at his art. He was still one of the finest violinists January had encountered, in New Orleans or in Paris. As he played, his eyelids had a crumpled look, lined and discolored, but the dark eyes themselves were dreamy, lost in the music and the rain. Every penny I own is tied up in this building... January thought of his sister, and of the child she had just borne. Of Agnes Pellicot, and of his mother. Men routinely gifted their pla??es with money or property as a congi when they put them aside; it was, he knew, one reason why many women of color crossed over the line of respectability and allowed white protectors to take them. With even a little money,