03 Graveyard Dust

EIGHT

"I was horrified to learn of Isaak's death." Mathurin Jumon's harsh, handsome face bore the marks of dissipation; puffiness under the eyes that spoke of late nights and bad sleep; the fine-broken veins that characterized a drinker's nose; and a pallid, unhealthy complexion. The blue-gray eyes were bright and intelligent in their discolored and wrinkled lids, and the late-afternoon light made January slightly embarrassed by his too-ready subscription to Antoine's suspicion of his uncle.

Just as well, he thought, folding his hands before him and lowering his eyes respectfully to the woven straw mats of the office floor, that Creoles as a rule didn't offer visitors of color any kind of refreshment. Hesitation about taking it would look bad. A polite request to test the hypothetical lemonade on the nearest stray dog would look worse.

The Rose and Metzger tests on the stomach of Shaw's victim had yielded no sign of arsenic. Not enough, January knew, to clear Olympe of administering poison of some kind-I have been poisoned, Isaak had said, dying. Not, I have been dosed with arsenic. And it could, of course, always be argued that the body wasn't even Isaak's, though January looked forward with morbid amusement to Genevi?ve Jumon's efforts to have it both ways in court.

But it was something. A first-rate lawyer could possibly use it to confuse the jury enough to get both women off: If, thought January, Olympe were not a voodoo. If the jury were educated enough to understand the distinction-which at this time of the year was a dangerous assumption to trust. And January shuddered at the thought of having no better weapon than obfuscation to defend his sister's life.

Isaak Jumon was dead. Celie Jumon had bought something from Olympe, poisoner and voodooienne. That might be all the jury would hear.

"When they told me he had been poisoned, and that Celie of all people was accused..." "Who told you this?" asked January.

"The police, initially." Jumon settled himself behind his desk in the office that opened off the courtyard of the family town house. It was a large room, flagged with granite that had come over as ballast from France, the whitewashed walls undecorated save for a portrait of a fair-haired girl clothed in the extravagancies of French court dress some fifty-five years ago. When the butler had shown January in, Mathurin had been counting money. It ranged in neat stacks along the edge of his desk. Mexican silver, mostly, piled tidily; half a dozen Dutch rix-dollars; four gold sovereigns and six gold, half-sovereigns, plus an assortment of American eagles, half-eagles, and notes. Creole families, January knew, held property in the name of the family; it was only when Cordelia Jumon saw clearly that neither Laurence nor Mathurin would produce an heir that she had sold off the lands and divided some of the money between her sons to invest. January wondered whether this was Mathurin's money, or his mother's. "A vile species of Kentucky buffoon who looked like he came down the river in a load of turnips, but he seemed to know his business. Please sit down, Monsieur Janvier, please sit down." Jumon gestured to the divan that stood at right angles to the desk of plain-wrought dark cypress wood, facing two long windows into a spacious courtyard thick with banana shrubs and roses. Beyond a screen of greenery, the kitchen could be glimpsed, and the tall, slant-roofed quarters of the slaves. The air was laden with scent, butter and onions and roasting squabs mingling with roses and sweet olive on the heatclotted afternoon air.

"This Kaintuck officer came to me Wednesday and asked if I had a nephew Isaak," continued Jumon. "When had I last seen him, were our relations such that Isaak would have come to me in trouble? Then he said that he had received a report-which later turned out to be from Isaak's mother, who as you probably know is a common hatmaker-that Isaak was dead. I suppose the police have told you the contents of this report?"

"Only that Isaak's brother was brought to a house he did not recognize, to be with his brother when he died."

"That's what they told me, yes." Jumon hesitated, trying to pick his words with care. "Now, Antoine was always... always a very fanciful little boy. Not always truthful, I'm afraid, and inclined to exaggerate when he thought he could win either admiration or sympathy, especially sympathy. At least he was so as a child. I haven't spoken to him in close to thirteen years. He may have changed." He sat looking down at his hands: big, muscular hands, despite their smoothness, square and coarse and heavy. "But then, people rarely do change, do they? Fundamental change is... can be much more difficult than one thinks." He fell silent. "Do you think he lied?"

Jumon startled. For an instant January had the impression the man was going to snap, Of course he lied... And that what he was thinking of was not Isaak's death. Instead he sighed. "I don't know." As he passed his hand over his face January smelled the cognac on his breath. He was dressed neatly, in the tailored wool coat and high stock of a gentleman that January considered such a horrifying absurdity in a tropical climate, in spite of the fact that he was clad so himself at the moment: he'd taken great care, on his return from the hospital, to bathe and dress in a fashion that said, I am a free man of color. I have nothing to do with those people who clean out your lamp chimneys and chamber pots those people whom you can buy and sell. "In a way it hardly matters. What matters is that the police believe him-and his motherand are prepared to hang two women on the strength of it. "

A servant woman appeared in the courtyard doors, middle-aged, once pretty, with the figure of a slightly overweight Juno and a kindly face. "Michie Mathurin, sir... Oh, I'm terribly sorry, I didn't see you've a visitor."

She started to back away and Jumon said, "No, Zoe my dear, it's quite all right." He raised his eyebrows at January as he spoke, wordlessly asking if it was in fact all right, something an American wouldn't even have bothered to ask, and January gestured his permission. "Excuse me, sir." The woman Zoe curtsied to January, then turned back to her master. "And I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but your mother sent me to ask you, when will you be ready with the carriage to ride out to Milneburgh, to dine with Warn Picard?"

January saw the surprised look that crossed Jumon's face and, a moment later, the glance the white man traded with the servant: mutual understanding, exasperation, resignation to the foibles of one they both knew too well. Zoe shook her head, it's not my. doing, sir, and Jumon made a wry face.

"Thank you for the warning, my dear." He sighed. "And I suppose the answer is, within half an hour." Zoe tucked away a quick smile, but couldn't keep it out of her eyes. "That's what it most generally is, sir," she said, and curtsied again. "I'll go let Benedict know, and tell Zeus to put up the mirlitons and see what he can save of the squabs." She stepped forward and picked up an old-fashioned drinking-goblet from among the papers on Jumon's desk, brilliant in the office's rather shadowy confines.

January said, in some surprise, "That isn't a Palissy goblet, is it, sir?"

Jumon beamed. "You're familiar with rustic ware?" Taking it from Zoe's hands, he turned the brightly enameled terra-cotta lovingly, cherishing it. "A childish weakness of mine, sir. My mother's always chiding me about dishes that should look like dishes and not like toads and leaves and dead fish. One doesn't see much of it on these shores."

"I don't think I've ever seen any on this side of the Atlantic, sir." Taking the man's undisguised pride for permission, January stepped forward, hands clasped politely behind his back, to study the vessel. It was a beautiful example of outre baroque style, the cup wrought as if of writhing kelp through which seashells and fish emerged. Within, pebbles, shells, crabs, and a little purple sea urchin seemed embedded in sand on the inner surface of the bowl, and at the bottom, through the dregs of the dark amber liquor, a perfectly wrought crawfish raised delicate claws, like St.

George's Laidly Worm emerging from its well. Every detail was exquisitely executed, every bladder on the kelp, every scale on the fish and spine on the urchin, even the bubbles clinging to the leaves; sea snail distinct from barnacle, sand dab distinct from sardine.

The black bright eyes of the crawfish seemed to be boring into January's. He thought of the man at the Charity Hospital, and looked rather quickly away.

"I can't prove it's a Palissy, of course." Jumon sighed. "My business agent tells me it's probably less than a century old, and Italian rather than French. But if it's a fake it's a good one. I shouldn't be drinking from it, of course." He shook his head. "I forget that these things can break. Only the other morning poor Zoe had to bring me the news that she'd found my best serpent pitcher-a genuine Palissy, that was-in pieces on the floor here." He nodded toward the fireplace. "I can only assume it was one of the cats. I'd like to think any of the servants would have let me know if they'd broken it accidentally."

He smiled after Zoe as she bore the goblet away through the jasmine and orange trees. "I suspect she shares my mother's opinion of platters that have half the food on them turn out to be part of the plate, but she's too kind to express it to me." He turned back, shaking his head a little. There was a hard tuck in the corner of his mouth, exasperation or calculation, thought January, or maybe only a momentary wondering about how much of a half-cooked dinner could be salvaged and put to later use, in this heat.

"To return to last week. A few days after the policeman's visit I received a note from Monsieur Gerard, the coffee merchant, whose daughter my nephew had mar ried. A perfectly lovely girl, sweet and sheltered..."

His smile changed and lightened the whole of his saturnine face.

"I should tell you that in spite of his mother, Isaak was on excellent terms with my brother and myself. That fact brought my brother a great deal of joy over the past five years. I know Laurence planned to attend their wedding, and in spite of my mother's rather-rather unfortunate attitude about his will, Isaak and Celie were of great comfort to me after-after Laurence died."

From the wall, the portrait of the smiling girl gazed down with brilliant gray-blue eyes, and January recognized the bracelets of diamonds and pearls on her wrists as those Madame Cordelia Jumon had worn to the St. Margaret's ball last night. A rapid mental calculation confirmed his thought, that that young lady in pink hoops and a fantasia of blond lace, with tiny models of water mill, miller, miller's donkey, wife, and cuckolding lover embedded in her high-piled fair hair... That was Madame Cordelia, Celie's age, at the Court of France.

Jumon sighed again. "I think that, except for the priest, I was the only white man present when Isaak and Celie were married." Though his movements were per fectly steady, and his speech clear, something in the droop cf his left eyelid triggered the thought in January's mind that the man had been drinking, and drinking rather a lot. "And do you know, I felt honored to have been invited? In spite of being obliged to come up with a succession of the most ridiculous subterfuges to attend. My mother had a soiree of some sort that afternoon, and she would never have let me hear the end of it if she knew I'd gone to the wedding. The mere thought that Celie would have done such an abominable thing is-is altogether beyond the belief of anyone who knows her.

Anyone who has seen them together..."

"According to young Master Antoine," said January carefully, "his brother died in 'a wealthy house,' a big house to which he-that is Antoine-had never been. Might Isaak have been trying to make his way here when he was taken ill?"

As if, he thought, there were two houses in New Orleans-or in Louisiana or the rest of the continent for that matter-that boasted Palissy water pitchers. Dis ingenuity on Jumon's part? The desk might have been moved, and the small chair in the corner had upholstery of crimson and gold and the look of a piece that needed a cushion, but even befuddled on opium Antoine couldn't have missed the portrait that dominated the room.

"I have thought of that." Jumon's heavy brow darkened with distress. "I will never forgive myself for being away that week. I was only across the lake in Mandeville, seeing to opening our house there-the weather here doesn't suit my mother in the summertime. Doesn't suit anyone, for that matter," he added with a swift, cynical grin. "Isaak must have tried to send me word that he was in trouble. I've made inquiries, but the Duplessises next door have already left town for the summer, and the Viellards on the other side are on their plantation now, of course. And Isaak had a key to the gate. He would have come here, to Zoe. If indeed," he added, "Antoine's testimony is accurate." He shook his head. "Antoine is, as I've said, a fanciful boy."

He looked up quickly as something dark moved in the brightness of the courtyard, and again his whole face transformed with his smile. "Mama! " He got to his feet; January also. "How are you this afternoon? Are you rested from Mass?"

Her voice was cool and flat as February ice in the Paris streets. "I'll manage." From behind a veil of the finest black lace January felt himself touched by the briefest of cold gazes and dismissed.

Cordelia Jumon brought a black-bordered white handkerchief to her lips, and coughed.

"Mama, forgive me for my delay here." Uncertainty flawed Jumon's attempt at a good-humored chuckle as he bent over her hand. It was strange, thought January, to see so physically formidable a man with a look in his eye like a jack hare listening for the distant belling of the pack.

"Benedict is just now getting the carriage."

"Tell him not to trouble himself." That flat alto held nothing: no warmth, no caring, not even reproach; but the woman's slim erect body was a silent sable curse. "By the time we reach Milneburgh it will scarcely have been worth the journey, and I see that you have other matters to attend to this afternoon."

She coughed again, more heavily, and turned to leave. Jumon caught her arm: she flinched as though he'd struck her. "Oh, Mama, forgive me, I'm so sorry..."

"It's nothing." She massaged the joint, fingers trembling, while her son stood with his big hands hovering uncertainly. She waited for a moment, as if to give him time to explain himself-there was in her stance, and the way she held her head, the echo of Genevi?ve and Antoine. Reproach at his inebriation, and the unspoken welcome of the weapon his weakness gave her. Then she turned like a dead queen's ghost and moved back toward the stairway that led up to the gallery.

"Mama, please." Jumon strode after her without a backward glance. Well, thought January, one didn't ask pardon or leave of a colored guest, after all. He watched them as Madame Jumon mounted the stair, Jumon's voice drifting back in flat snippets of echo: "Please don't be angry."

"I'm not angry, son."

"You are. I can see you are."

"I only thought-and perhaps this is no longer true, but I can only go on what you have told methat when you requested me to accompany you to Milneburgh for dinner we should have time enough to enjoy ourselves along the lakeshore."

"Mama, it was you who wanted to dine with the Picards."

January felt a twinge of pity as the voices died away into the loggia, knowing perfectly well that with a woman like Madame Jumon-or his own mother-pointing out that something was her idea and not your own was merely an invitation to frozen silence, followed by an equally glacial agreement and an unspoken, You know that this is only lip service and so do I. Are you satisfied, my son? The only way to win was to walk away.

This, obviously, Jumon didn't do, for he did not return to the office. Somewhere in the house, January thought, the scene was being played out: exhausting, hashed-over, filled with unspoken feelings and unsaid words, like the quarrel of lovers whose love has soured to poison but not yet died. But to leave would be impolite and might well alienate a man whose help he'd need if he was to free Olympe-if the man wasn't the one who'd put her in prison in the first place. The one who'd paid Munbo Oba, and Killdevil Ned. So he remained, standing, for he had not been given permission to sit down again... Appalling, what habit could do.

Only it wasn't habit. There were men who'd thrash a black man for "making himself at home in my office" unbidden.

"Michie Janvier."

The woman Zoe appeared in the doorway, her smile friendly but neutral, carefully distancing herself from anything that had transpired between master and mistress. "Something's come up that calls Michie Mathurin away. He's sorry he won't be able to come back to you for maybe some hours. Can you come again, another day? He'll send you round a note, saying when will be best."

The woman had come from the direction of the kitchen, not the house. January guessed she'd seen Jumon and his mother from the kitchen and had deduced from long experience what was taking place. Her smile, and the easy way she spoke, told of long practice in covering for the man.

Still, there was nothing to say but "Thank you, Mamzelle Zoe," as he donned his high beaver hat.

'"What do you think of this story about Michie Isaak, Mamzelle?" he asked, as she walked him across the fancy brickwork of the fountained court and through the carriageway, where grooms hitched a pair of matched grays (Bishopped, he'd heard his mother say derisively, and indeed the off-wheeler did look considerably older than its partner) to a carriage lacquered cobalt and black.

"About his being brought to a big house to die? I know Michie Jumon heard nothing from his neighbors, but sometimes folks hear things that their masters don't."

Her glance ducked away from his. "Oh, no, sir. That is-Michie Isaak came here many a time, with Mamzelle Celie. Not to the house, of course, because of Madame. But Madame was here that night, and all the other servants. Someone would have heard, if he'd tried to come in."

She curtsied deeply, as they stepped through the archway and onto the brick banquette of Rue St.

Louis. "I gives you good day, sir." Her smile was friendly and completely unreadable. Then she turned and disappeared into the shadows behind Laurence Jumon's expensive carriage-team, glimpsed once more as a swift flash of redand-purple tignon in the sunlight of the courtyard beyond, then gone.