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

one of the attics. Romulus can have the room tidied up in no time, and there'll be another four of these if
you hold your tongue."

He started to rise, looking around him—possibly for Dominique—and January touched his arm, drawing
his attention again. "You know, sir," he said gravely, "I think you may be right about a private
investigation. Myself, I wouldn't trust the police now diat they have so many . . . Well, maybe I shouldn't
say it about white men, sir, but I think you know, and I know, that some of these Kentuckians and riffraff
they have coming down the river nowadays . . . And putting them on the police force, too!"

"Exactly!" cried Froissart, with a jab of his stubby, bejeweled finger. January saw all recollection of
Dominique's presence in the room evaporate from Froissart's face and felt a mild astonishment that he'd
remembered, out of all his mother's crazy quilt of gossip, that Froissart had been furious with chagrin over
the construction by Americans of the new St. Louis Hotel Ballroom on Baronne Street.

But as if January had rubbed a magic talisman he'd found in the street, Froissart launched into an
extended recital of the insults and indignities he had suffered, not only at the hands of the Americans on
the police force but of the Kentucky riverboat men, American traders, upstart planters and every
newcomer who had flooded into New Orleans since Napoleon's perfidious betrayal of the city into
United States hands.

During the recital January continued to kneel beside Angelique's body, touching it as little as
possible—she was, after all, a white man's woman—but observing what he could.

Lace crushed and broken at the back of her collar, knotted with the gaudy tangle of real and artificial
cheve-lure. In the dim light of the candles it was hard to tell, but he didn't think there were threads caught
in it, though there might be some in her dark hair. Fluffs of swansdown from her torn sleeve were
scattered across the gorgeous Turkey carpet, thickest just to the left of the low chair. A cluster of work
candles stood on the small table immediately to the chair's right, draped with huge, uneven winding-sheets
of drippings. They'd been there when he'd come in. She'd been fixing her wings, he remembered, by their
light. In France it would have been an oil lamp, but mostly in New Orleans they used candles. The
drippings were distorted from repeated draughts—people had been in and out of the parlor all evening,
fixing their ruffles or looking for her. Froissart was lucky the table hadn't been kicked over in the struggle.
The whole building could have gone up.

Swansdown wasn't the only thing on the carpet. A peacock eye near the chair told him that Sultana girl in
the blue lustring had been here. A dozen calibers of imitation pearls were trodden into the carpet:
Marie-Anne had had large ones on her mask and bodice, and the drop-shaped ones he'd seen on the
sleeves of the American Henry VIII's Anne Boleyn. Mardi Gras costumes were never made as well as
street clothes, and ribbons, glass gems, and silk roses dotted the floor among thread ends of every color
of the rainbow. In the padded arm of the velvet chair a needle caught the light like a splinter of glass.

Drunken laughter floated in from the Rue Ste.-Ann through the single tall window that nearly filled one
side of the room. The brass band still played in the street. Shouts of mirth, a woman's shrill squeak of not
entirely displeased protest. Men cursed in French, German, slangy riverboat English, and there was a
heavy splash as someone fell into the gutter, followed by whoops of drunken laughter.

January glanced at the window, not daring to break Froissart's self-centered oblivion by walking over to
check whether there were marks on the sill. The killer could have stepped out one of the ballroom
windows and walked along the gallery, he supposed. But with the heat of the ballroom, other revelers
had taken refuge on the gallery, and such an escape would not have gone unseen. Carnival rioted below,