Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online Page B

had anything to do with the poisoning of, her husband, a young man of whom I never approved . . .”
    “Papa!” Iron clanked in the courtyard doors. The girl framed in its light took a hasty step toward the group in the corner, then hesitated, glancing for permission at the wiry little lamplighter who escorted her. Shaw beckoned, and the lamplighter, keeping a firm hold on the other end of the chain that manacled the girl's wrists, followed her over. “Papa, is it true?” Célie Jumon looked frantically from her father to Lieutenant Shaw to Olympe, huge brown eyes swollen in the fragile oval of her face. “They told me-last night they told me . . . Isaak . . .”
    Shaw spit another line of tobacco juice, and said gently, “I'm afraid it is, M'am Jumon.”
    The girl pressed her hand to her mouth, but didn't make a sound. Her sprig-muslin dress was soiled and rumpled from spending the night in filthy straw, but she'd scrubbed her face and hands in the courtyard fountain and rearranged her tignon. In its simple green and-white-striped frame the childish youthfiilness of her face made a dreadful contrast to the horror in her eyes. Rising quickly, January guided the girl to his chair. Her mother fell on her knees beside her, stroking and kissing the shackle bruises on her wrists and weeping in stifled, soundless gasps.
    The Lieutenant looked around him at the group that was rapidly outgrowing its corner of the watch room: Olympe, her husband, January, and Mamzelle Marie; Gérard, his wife, and Célie; and the two lamplighter Guards in charge of the prisoners. “Well, at least I won't have to go through this more'n oncet.” He sighed philosophically, and scratched his hip. "M'am Jumon, I am sorry, because I know this's gonna be painful for you, but they're gonna want us all over to the Recorder's Court in a minute, and you'd all best know what we're goin' on.
    “Last Monday night, which was the twenty-third, twenty-fourth June, Isaak Jumon's brother, Antoine, was brought by a servant he didn't recognize to a big house he'd never seed before, where his brother lay dyin'. Antoine says Isaak was far gone when Antoine got there, vomitin' an' clammy an' achin' all over an' pretty much actin' like someone that's been dosed real good with arsenic. Antoine did what he could for his brother-who he hadn't seen in a couple months owin' to a quarrel in the family-with the help of a old mulatto woman who was there, but it warn't no good. Isaak kept tryin' to tell him somethin' but was so sick Antoine couldn't make out what. Once he managed to say, I have been poisoned. Then a little later he said, Célie, an' died.”
    Célie looked away. Her mother, numbly stroking the ruin of her frock, tears flowing down her face, seemed barely to have heard.
    “It's a long way,” pointed out January quietly, “from I have been poisoned and Célie, to I have been poisoned BY Célie. If you don't mind my mentioning it, sir.” He made a genuine effort to keep the anger from his voice, anger over the fear in his brother-in-law's face, over Madame Gérard's tears. He knew it wasn't the Kentuckian's fault.
    “I don't mind you mentionin' the matter, Maestro,” said the policeman evenly. “Fact remains the boy is dead, and M'am Jumon did go buy somethin' from your sister.” Vilhardouin's hand shut restrainingly on Monsieur Gérard's sleeve. “And the fact remains your sister does so happen to have had a big pot of arsenic on a shelf in her parlor, not to speak of makin' a livin' sellin' strange things to people wrapped up in little bits of black paper. No offense meant, M'am. M'am.” He nodded respectfully for good measure in Marie Laveau's direction.
    The sergeants had begun whipping the errant slaves in the courtyard outside. Celie flinched at the crack of leather on flesh, hid her face when someone-a woman, by the sound of it-cried out, a strangled sound grimly silenced. Men came through the watch room, in the well-cut clothing and beaver hats