"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man of Color" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

hair. One extravagant sleeve was torn away from the shoulder, and a drift of white swansdown leaked
out onto the dark satin of the domino beneath her. Beside her, the wings lay like the brittle, shorn-off
wings of the flying ants that showed up on every windowsill and back step after swarming season.

January knelt to touch the needle dangling loose from the torn netting at the end of its trailing clew of silk.

"She was under the cloaks. I saw just a corner of her dress sticking out and remembered there was no
one else in the ballroom wearing white."

"Did you pull off her mask?"

Minou nodded. "She had it on when I—when I found her. I thought she might have been still alive. . . . I
swear I don't know what I thought."

This room, like Froissart's office, had not been included when the building was converted to gaslight.
Instead, branches of expensive wax candles burned against glass reflectors all around the walls. It was a
haunted light, after the brilliance of the gas, as if the whole chamber had been preserved in amber long
ago, and the woman who lay on the cloaks were no more than some beautiful, exotic relic of an
antediluvian world. But under the eerie, tabby-cat face shoved up onto her forehead, there was no
mistaking the bluish cast of the skin, the swollen tongue, and bulging, bruised-looking eyes. There was
certainly no mistaking the marks around her neck. Behind them, Leon Froissart whispered, "My God, my
God, what am I to do? All the gentlemen in the ballroom . . ."

"Send someone for the police," said January. "God have mercy on her." He crossed himself and offered
an inward prayer, then turned the lace-mitted hand over in his. There was blood under all her nails; two
of them had been pulled almost clear of their beds in the struggle, and dabs of red stood on her skirt and
sleeves like the fallen petals of a wilting rose.

He was thinking fast: about the passageway from the ballroom to the Theatre, about the courtyard with
its teeming, masked fantasies. About the Coleridge dreams ascending and descending the double stair to
the lobby, and the double doors opening from lobby to gaming rooms, and from gaming rooms to the
street.

"Now, immediately, as soon as possible. Keep anyone from entering or leaving the building and send
someone over to the Theatre and tell them to do the same. If anyone tries to leave tell them we've found
a large sum of money and we have to identify the owner. But mostly just tell Hannibal and the others to
play that Beethoven contradanse. It should keep everybody happy," he added, turning to see the look of
horror that swept Froissart's face.

Belatedly, he remembered he was no longer in Paris, shifted his eyes quickly from the white man's eyes
and modified the tone of command from his voice. "You know the police are going to want to talk to
everyone."

"Police?" Froissart stared at him in horror. "We can't send for the police!"

January looked up, startled into meeting his eyes. Froissart was a Frenchman of France, without the
American's automatic contempt for persons of color, but he'd been in the country for years. Still, an
American wouldn't have flushed or have turned his glance away in shame.

"Some ... some of the most prominent men in the city are here tonight!" There was pleading in his voice.