Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard by Barbara Hambly Page A

that the very pattern of the lace was reproduced, draped half over the name, the name readable through it-a truly astonishing piece. “We were working on this for old Madame Livaudais. Two-two City Guards came with the warrant. Isaak put aside his chisel and looked at it, and said, `This is ridiculous.' Very calmly, just like that. To the men he said, `I see my mother has decided to waste everyone's time. Please excuse me for just a moment while I get my coat and let my wife know where I'll be.' Cool-cold as the marble itself. But the way he touched the block”-Nogent mimicked the gesture, resting his palm for a moment on the flowered delicacy of the counterfeit lace's edge, holding it there, bidding it farewell-“I knew.”
    The movement of his eyes pointed back to the kitchen building that lay athwart the end of the yard. A little flight of stairs ascended to the rooms above, a garçonnière and chambers that would have belonged to household servants, had there been any. “He went up to the rooms they had, over the kitchen there. I kept the Guards talking, led them away from the doors here so they would not see. He must have gone up the scaffolding of the cistern-you see it there in the corner?-and over the wall into the next courtyard, and so out onto Rue St. Philippe and gone. He didn't tell Célie; only that he was going with them. The Guards must have waited here for him twenty minutes before they went to look. I think he did that so Célie wouldn't be accused of helping a runaway to escape. Even then, he thought of her.”
    “May I see?”
    Nogent followed him out into the yard and to the cistern, where, sure enough, January found the scuffing and scrape marks on the frame of the scaffolding that held up the enormous coopered barrel in a corner of the yard. Like most yards in the French town, Nogent's was hemmed by a high wall, brick faced with stucco that had fallen out in patches, affording handholds. The fringe of resurrection fern along the top seemed to be broken, as if by passage of a body going over, but with the new growth already flourishing it was impossible to tell. January made a move to scramble up himself and see, but the lancing pain in his arms as he lifted them brought him up short.
    “And the night of the twenty-third?” he asked, turning back to the old sculptor. “The night he died? Was young Madame Jumon here then?”
    “That animal Shaw asked the same.” Nogent spoke without rancor-animal was in fact one of the more polite terms by which members of the French and free colored communities referred to Americans. “And I tell you what I told him. Madame Célie and I had supper together, here in the house, just as dusk fell. Then I went to bed. I tire more easily than I used to, you understand.”
    He coughed again, and January knew that what he said was true. He wondered if, like the fiddler Hannibal, Nogent welcomed Morpheus with a spoonful of laudanum for the pain.
    “It was threatening rain all evening, M'sieu. I cannot imagine Madame Célie would have ventured forth. Then, too, she had the habit of remaining indoors at night, in the hopes that Isaak would come, or send word.”
    “So Célie was by herself in the garçonnière here?”
    “Yes. But, of course, this animal would have a witness. And when she had none-and she a married lady whose husband was away!-he said, 'Ah, she is a murderess,' and placed her under arrest.”
    January's eye traveled over the brick-paved yard, still puddled from the afternoon's downpour. The soft, pitted pavement would hold no track, of course, to show whether Célie Jumon had remained in place that night. And it had rained, not once but many times, as always in New Orleans in June.
    “How long had Isaak Jumon been with you, M'sieu Nogent?” he asked.
    “Two years,” replied the sculptor. “Nearly three. He was truly a son to me.”
    “Do you know any who would want Isaak Jumon dead? Who would wish him ill?”
    “Ah.” Nogent was silent, his