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.Instead he said, gently, ‘Your Lordship, I’m trying to help you.You say they can’t hang you because you didn’t do it.But if you go before a jury with the weak excuses you’ve given me today, I can promise you that they will.’NINE‘Do you believe him?’Shaw stopped in the door of the watch room, his sparse brows twitching down over his gargoyle nose.‘Do I believe him what? If’n I had a dollar for every lie that boy told us just now.’Behind them in the courtyard came the leathery smack of a whip on meat, the girl’s frantic scream.January’s jaw hardened so much that he thought his teeth would break.He followed the Kentuckian into the dim rumbling confusion of the watch room again.‘Do you believe he killed Derryhick?’Shaw sighed, and in that sigh January heard the lies of sweet maiden aunts who had murdered their brothers for the family property, of respectable French Creole society matrons who tortured slaves in their attics, of charitable gentlemen who thought nothing of raping fourteen-year-old black girls.‘What is truth?’ Pontius Pilate had asked: the cry from the heart of judges and policemen down through the ages.‘Believin’ ain’t my job,’ said Shaw, after they had picked their way through the crowded chamber in a silence that January had not had the temerity to break.‘But whether or not Derryhick pulled a gun on this Blessin’hurst Lordship just before he hightailed it back to his hotel to meet his Maker, somethin’ about this-all sure don’t listen right to me.I’ll sure look this feller up.They’s only two or three hotels in town where a Lordship would put up.An’ I’ll look into where else Uncle Diogenes mighta been – an’ this Droudge feller as well, who ain’t got much better of a story than His Lordship, exceptin’ that his boots was clean Friday mornin’ an’ there weren’t no watch with blood on it under his bed.Any chance you can catch Quennell at the coffin shop an’ ask what it was His Other Lordship said to Derryhick that got his dander up?’‘Unfortunately, not directly.’ They stepped through the Cabildo’s doors into the arcade again and stood looking out across the Place d’Armes in the queer, thickening light of coming storm.‘The problem is that I’m supposed to be watching him at the Countess’s for another reason entirely.’‘A reason that’s got to do with him spendin’ time at the most expensive whorehouse in town on a bank clerk’s salary?’Of course, it was Shaw’s business to know who was doing what in New Orleans.‘A reason that’s got to do with him keeping the books for the Burial Society,’ January said pointedly.‘So it’s best I don’t draw his attention to me as a man who asks questions.I’ll have to speak to the other members of the board.’‘Fair ’nuff.Consarn,’ Shaw added mildly, as two youths emerged from the mouth of Rue du Levee, where that seedy waterfront thoroughfare debouched into the Place d’Armes, and pelted in the direction of the Cabildo in arm-waving panic.‘Don’t folks in this town never just sit an’ watch the flies?’When Shaw strode off in the direction of the two winged Mercuries – who seized the policeman by the arms as soon as he came in grasping distance and poured out some frantic tale, pointing back in the direction from which they’d come – January considered seeking out Hannibal.But he judged that by the time he reached the Swamp – rain or no rain – the local desperadoes would be just drunk enough to be looking for trouble, and he had had, he considered, trouble sufficient unto the day.So he returned to home, Rose, and Sunday dinner, and then an evening of sitting on the gallery of their house overlooking Rue Esplanade, watching the lightning and playing his guitar for the woman he most loved on earth.At one point, listening to his account of the parallel events and discoveries of The Problem of the White Half-Brother and The Problem of the Deceased Irishman, Rose remarked, ‘Does it occur to you that Hannibal knows a great deal more about this than he should?’It had, but January found himself as unwilling to look in that direction as Hannibal was to consider Foxford’s guilt.‘He knows the family.And he was part of Derryhick’s “merry band”.’‘There’s a difference between “knowing the family” and being as certain as he claims to be that a boy he last encountered as a child in dresses is innocent.If, in fact, he hasn’t seen the boy for seventeen years.’January’s fingers stilled on the strings.‘Did you see his face when he saw Derryhick’s body? That shock was genuine.I’ll take oath on it.’‘You may have to.’He glanced sidelong at her.‘It won’t have escaped Lieutenant Shaw,’ she went on, ‘that, for a man who’s spent the past two nights making discreet enquiries in every gambling hell and brothel in town as to the whereabouts of Uncle Diogenes, Hannibal has taken good care not to come face-to-face with the Viscount himself.and did so even before anyone viewed the murder scene.He “absquatulated”, as Shaw would put it, before the City Guard even arrived.You don’t happen to know where Hannibal was on Thursday night, do you?’‘I don’t,’ said January.‘I imagine it could be found out readily enough.if Shaw hasn’t discovered it himself already.Hannibal didn’t know who the boy was on Monday night.I’ll take oath on that, too.When I spoke to him Friday, after the funeral, he was simply too hung-over to lie.’Rose’s quick-flash smile disappeared as swiftly as it had come.‘You may be right about that.Still,’ she said, ‘there’s something about his – his certainty – that doesn’t look well.’‘I don’t know whether it’s certainty,’ said January, ‘or just wilful blindness.With luck, Lord Montague Blessinghurst will put in an appearance at the Countess’s tomorrow night, and things will become a little clearer.’That Monday night Jacob Schurtz returned to the Countess’s, ebullient with champagne and eager to explain to the beautiful Sybilla, in rather fuddled detail, how Martin Van Buren’s aristocratic penchant for silk dressing-gowns and golden coffee-spoons was despoiling the pockets of honest Americans – to which the Irish girl listened with a fascination that January knew would lead to hair pulling and accusations of betrayal the next time Trinchen got drunk.Trinchen spent a good deal of effort trying to edge herself into the conversation and on to the wealthy Yankee’s knee, a spectacle that Martin Quennell – present also – seemed to take in good part.Quennell, January noted, had replaced his champagne-ruined attire: new-made coat, trousers, and three new waistcoats in the most stylish of embroidered silks.Can’t look shabby when you’re on the town with your prospective brother-in-law [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]