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

January could already hear that the tenor of the noise from the gaming rooms and the downstairs lobby
had changed as well.

"What . . ." stammered Froissart. "What? . . .".

The tall man touched the brim of his low-crowned hat, and spit a stream of tobacco in the general
direction of the sandbox. He was unshaven, noisome, and the sugar-brown hair hanging to his shoulders
was stringy with grease. "Abishag Shaw, lieutenant of the New Orleans police, at your service, sir."
FIVE
"This is an outrage!" The plump Ivanhoe who'd been negotiating with Agnes Pellicot stationed himself
foursquare in the central of the three ballroom doorways, ornamental sword drawn as if to reenact
Roncevaux upon the threshold. Looking past him, January was interested to note that; the invisible
barriers that had separated the American's—-the Roman, Henry VIII, Richelieu—from the Creoles
seemed momentarily to have dissolved. "None of us had the least thing to do with that cocotte's death,
and I consider it an insult for you to say that we have!"

"Why, hell, sir, I know you got nuthin' to do with it." Police Lieutenant Abishag Shaw, though he replied
in English, did not appear to have any trouble understanding the man's French. He folded his long arms,
stepped closer to the doorway and lowered his voice as if to exclude the three constables grouped
uncertainly be hind him, their eyes on the curtained passage to the Theatre next door. "But I also know
men like yourselves don't miss much of what goes on around them, neither. Anything happen out of the
ordinary—an' maybe you wouldn'ta knowed it was out of the ordinary at the time —you'd a seen it.
That's what I'm countin' on to help me find this killer."

The Creoles muttered and whispered among themselves in French. January heard a man start to say in
English, "She's only a ..." The concluding words, nigger whore, remained unsaid, probably more
because the speaker realized that saying them would damage his chances with the dead woman's fellow
demimondaines than out of any consideration of good taste. Old Xavier Peralta turned his head. "She
was a free woman of this city, sir," he said quietly. "She is entitled to this city's justice."

"I agree," said Ivanhoe. "But there is no need for us to unmask to tell you what we have seen tonight."

Shaw scratched his unshaven jaw. "Well," he said in his mild tenor voice, "in fact there is." And he aimed
another long stream of tobacco juice into the nearest spittoon, missing by only inches—not bad at the
distance, January thought.

"Malarkey!" barked Henry VIII. Only men were visible in the doorway, but January could see the silken
bevies of women grouped in the other two entries, watching with eyes that held not love, but worried
calculation, like the occupants of a sinking vessel computing the square footage of the rafts.

From the parlor a wailing shriek sliced the air: "Angelique, my baby! My angel! Oh dear God, my baby!"
Other voices murmured, soothing, weeping, calming.

January's eyes returned to the faces of the men. It was absurd to suppose the murderer was still in the
ballroom, or anywhere in the Salle d'Orleans. Henri Viellard certainly wasn't, having beaten a hasty
retreat through the passageway to the concealing skirts of his mother, sisters, and aunts, who would be
willing like any group of Creoles to perjure themselves for the good of the family. William Granger
likewise seemed, as the Kaintucks put it, to have absquatulated. In fact only a small group of men
remained in a room that had been crammed with a preponderance of them moments before. The ladies in
the Thedtre d'Orleans must have wondered why their menfolk had developed so sudden a craving for