Fifteen or sixteen previous efforts marked the stone floor between box and desk. "The cook was gone by the time I spoke with her."
"The same way she told the magistrate about her own symptoms?" January produced the menus from his pocket, laid them on the desk. "That's what they ate for supper that night. Bring in any cook in the city and ask him; there isn't a thing there that takes over an hour to prepare. Cora Chouteau couldn't have poisoned the supper before she left."
Shaw turned the papers over with fingers like jointed oak sticks. "And you got these where?"
January met his eyes coldly. "The rubbish bins outside the house at Spanish Bayou." He opened his mouth to add, This was in Emily Redfern's chimney, but knew even as the words came to his lips that Shaw-and any lawyer-would only ask, Did Cora Chouteau have access to that chimney? And, of course, she had. So he waited, silent, while Shaw scratched his stubbled jaw.
"This is all very interestin', Maestro. And believe me, with your permission I'll sort of set it aside in a safe place to kind of ferment a spell, and see what else I can find. But I do think I should point out to you that even if Miss Chouteau gets cleared of Borgialatin' the soup herself, it ain't gonna win her freedom."
The lieutenant folded up the menus and secreted them in his desk. Scraps and shards of quill lay all over its tobacco-stained and scarified surface; the report he'd been working on looked as if a lizard had escaped from the inkwell and run madly about on the page.
At most, January thought, if Emily Redfern were hanged, Cora Chouteau would become the property of her estate. And he knew as he formed the words in his mind that Emily Redfern would never hang.
"I would suggest that you speak to Mademoiselle Vitrac about why Emily Redfern would want to shift the blame for the murder onto Cora," he said, more quietly.
"Except that Emily Redfern seems to have taken pains to have her driven out of town in disgrace."
"Well, it's a funny thing about that." Shaw dug in the back of his desk drawer, and withdrew a double-strand of softly golden miniature moons. "Miz Redfern says these ain't her pearls. And that hundred and ninety dollars we found at the school-Miz Redfern says the money that feller Granville from the Bank of Louisiana paid her Tuesday was all in banknotes. Not a coin in the lot."
He trailed the pearls from one big hand to the other, as if admiring the smoothness of them, the organic satiny texture, like flower petals, so different from the jewels of the earth.
"What?"
"Well, them was my very sentiments, Maestro. You ever have the privilege of meetin' the lady?"
January nodded. He had, he realized, only the dim vision of blurred whiteness behind crepe veils, and the sharp hard voice biting out orders to the obsequious Fraikes. But he'd seen Emily Redfern in action. That was enough.
"She strike you as a lady who'd forbear to recover a necklace worth five hundred dollars out of consideration for a schoolmarm's reputation? Or who'd pass up a hun dred and ninety dollars which could be hers for the sayin' of, `Yes, it's mine?' 'Specially now, with her not able to even pay the rent where she's stayin'?"
January opened his mouth, then shut it again. Someone came over behind Shaw's desk and lit one of the oil lamps; with the thickening of the storm clouds the big room was fast becoming dark as evening, though it was barely ten. "Have you investigated?"
"Investigate what? Why a lady chooses not to prosecute or pursue the gal she claims killed her husband?
Iff'n she says these ain't her pearls I can't shove 'em in her pocket for her, nor," Shaw added shrewdly,
"would you want me to."
January was silent, trying to fit pieces together that would not fit.
"Now as for them servants," Shaw went on after a moment. "I checked every exchange and barracoon from here to Carrollton. I got a passel of directions." He delved into the drawer once more to produce a sheaf of unreadable notes. "But I can't go traipsin' to the Missouri frontier lookin' for 'em to ask.
'Specially when you know and I know the case would be just as likely to go against her as for her, with the evidence we got."
Shaw cached the notes back in his drawer, and dumped the pearls unceremoniously in after them. "That